HEARTS CAN BREAK
Chapter Fourteen
Rose shivered more noticeably.
She couldn't imagine the cold yet. Not yet. She had been trapped in it below
decks, swirled in it behind a locked gate, pounded with it down a hallway. She
had watched the sea swallow the ship deck by deck, room by room. Yet she had
not felt the pure icy fury of the North Atlantic, had not dreamed of the
massacre that would take place by the water, the water that had looked so
harmless and gentle only hours ago.
Her thoughts were broken by a
sudden huge groan that filled the night. It was the Titanic's death moans. Her
heartbeat quickened. It seemed as if everything was still for one second.
And then it was dark.
The lights, which had been
burning so brightly and so faithfully since the beginning of time, it seemed,
staying lit even when the mountain of ice gashed its hull, were suddenly
extinguished. Everything was as black as eternity, with the billions of stars
offering a little amount of white light.
All of the terror that Jack had
been holding back overflowed his heart. Oh, God, he thought. Not yet!
I'm not ready; she's not ready. Not now...
All was silent as hell for a
moment, and then the screams heightened. Everything was so unknown, so
sentencing now, in the darkness. Titanic seemed frozen in time, already knowing
the battle was lost, as the people of the human race shrieked and fell, their
blood forever on the hands of the mighty ocean.
It came in a burst of
sound--tearing and twisting steel and metal. It was what Rose had least
expected and she screamed, her cry echoing along the empty horizon of
blackness. She threw herself as deep as she could into Jack's arms, trying to
close her eyes, yet unwillingly unable to do so. Horrified, she saw the young
boy from moments ago ripped from his mother's arms by the force of the tilt. He
let out an anguished yell and began to flail as he slipped down the hull.
"Will!" his mother
shrieked, holding tightly onto the white metal rail. The little child's body
landed in the water with a splash, and he stayed silent and unmoving.
"Will! No! Will!" The woman continued to grieve in pain. She lost the
will to live. Rose could barely watch as she let go and allowed herself to fall
down to the sea. Her frame was banged into several sections of the ship and
when she finally floated on the ocean, she lay still. Rose began to cry.
The rivets were dashed with the
weight of the stern. She turned her attention to the middle of the ship and
saw, aghast, the boards of the ship's deck begin to split and tear, with a will
of their own, and pull apart. She barely had time to register any emotion in
her mind while Titanic gashed into two sections. She saw specks of people
falling into the empty, gaping hole that had once joined bow and stern. Sparks
and clouds of smoke burst into the air.
Not this bad! Let it be over
soon. Please. Not this bad, she thought silently as her mind pulsed and went numb while her
heart froze over, an ice that would coat it for eternity. The sickening thuds
echoed through the night as surely as they would forever as passengers were
thrown through the dark, into the deep, foreboding blackness of the waves.
"Jack!" she screamed.
Suddenly the stern took a sudden dive and threw itself back level into the
waves. She shrieked louder as she saw the hundreds of people that were beneath
the ship. Her stomach ended in her throat. Her heart pounded in her head.
Everything blurred into utter blackness as Jack held her more firmly with his
body.
For him, now was the test of
time. Everything was happening so fast he couldn't think, and yet at the same
time in slow motion so he was trapped in the horror of the moment for eternity.
The people...oh, God, the people. He could hear their screams, feel their pain,
see their deaths.
*****
The dive suddenly ended as the
stern of Titanic bobbed even in the waves. The black ruffles carried the people
beneath the ship and seemed to flow into Jack's heart. The fear had been bad.
He had been convinced it was terror. He thought it couldn't get any worse.
It got worse.
He was paralyzed. He could barely
move. Every muscle was frozen in place. Fear like this had never existed before
in a person's mind. Something shot right through him. Jack was never afraid. He
had hit his life right on, had never stopped to worry about a thing. Not in the
streets of New York, or Santa Monica, or Italy, or France, or London...
And now he was terrified. If he
felt like this, he could hardly imagine how Rose was feeling. He wanted to
knife through heaven and earth to save her. She had finally overcome society
and her life for him, had unleashed her love, and had been willing to give up
everything the foundation of her family had been built upon. And what had he
provided her with in return? Almost certain death, torture, and cold,
unbearable, unthinkable cold.
If there was one last wish he
could make, it would be to get her outta here.
The desire was made more
desperate when, with a peal like thunder, the deck beneath him began to rise
again.
"God, no," Rose
murmured and clutched his arm through his shirt. "No...please..." In
that moment he would have fought heaven and hell to take away her panic and
hurt. He held her tighter in his arms as the last attachment of the bow pulled
the stern up, and up, and up...
His feet were slipping; he was
being pulled down, as if gravity was conspiring with water to end his life.
"We have to move!" he
yelled over the roar and groan of twisting metal. Rose trembled and felt
instantly vulnerable when his arms let go of her waist. She grasped the railing
tighter as she saw his strong, nimble body slip past her. He heaved himself to
the other side of the bars, his legs dangling past him. Finally, he swung
around, lying on the white rails, stomach down.
"C'mon! Give me your hand.
I'll pull you over," he called to Rose, who was hanging with her body
hanging and falling into space. His heart pounded as he grabbed her hands.
Through it all the stern continued to rise.
She gave a scream as she tried to
pull herself up, but failed. She slid further down. Her breathing became
desperate and pained. "I can't!"
"C'mon! Give me your hand! I
gotcha!" he shouted down. He gripped her soft, creamy arms tightly.
"I gotcha." She was shaking too hard to fight herself up. He pulled
her up, not willing to let her give in to her tiredness. She was light and
within seconds he had helped her beside him.
*****
The stern still ascended to the
heavens, determined to reach the skies. It picked up speed. Rose's heart banged
in her chest. If the ship fell like the smokestack, or exploded, or...
"What's happening,
Jack?" she screamed, terrified. Jack always had an answer for everything.
However, now, his voice was just
as panic-stricken as hers when he replied. "I don't know! I don't
know!" Her brain began to pulse in all different directions. He didn't
know...oh, God! Jack didn't know! It was as if something happened to her in
that moment. All the courage she had been building was suddenly melted away by
intense cold and she was left as bare for bravery as the day she was born.
She lay still as the stern
suddenly froze in motion. "Jack!" she shrieked, unable to keep his
name from escaping her lips. The word froze as a silver cloud in the air.
"Rose!" he murmured
back, clearly as afraid and uncertain as she. He grasped her more tightly
around the waist and had no choice but to watch the sight around him.
The end of the ship was standing
like a tall, stark shadow pointing to the sky, as if showing the destination of
the night. Like jewels littered across a sheet of black silk, the stars
glimmered down on Titanic. Everything was silent.
Trembling, Rose's eyes swept over
the scene in front of her. She heard gasping beside her, the pain of breath that
made her look to her right.
Helga was still grasping the rail
with everything that was in her, but it was obvious her strength was
diminishing. She was shuddering so hard that her entire body seemed to be
quivering. Her eyes were glimmers of iced, terrified, accepting blue. For a
moment, it looked as if the sea was reflecting in those pools of color. Tears
were frozen on her red, numb-looking cheeks. Each blonde curl was tangled and
windblown. She was looking at Rose like she was asking her for something,
begging for something. Rose didn't know what she could do--there was nothing
left to do at all, except die. She might be racing away now, but eventually the
death would catch up to her.
In a moment, Helga was gone. Her
hands slipped on the rail, grabbing, reaching for something that was not there.
She screamed and suddenly plummeted through the air, trying to save herself,
but no savior was in sight.
Terrified and sickened to the
core, Rose turned to see a man on the rail, above where Helga had been. He was
the only one who could have saved the girl--how could he not have? Her eyes
penetrated his soul and, full of guilt, he turned away.
Before Rose could think, the
groaning began again. The stern slowly began to slip beneath the bubbling
surface of freezing, salty waves.
As the cracks of moorings, wood,
and steel sounded, she began to tremble violently again. Jack moved half over
her to protect her and hold her more firmly against his body.
"This is it!" He
shouted to be heard. Titanic continued to glide beneath the water. Small waves
of water washed up her deck and exploded into her innards.
Rose's mind completely
evaporated. She felt as if she were on the summit of a mountain and about to be
pushed down. Her stomach left and her chest hurt. The fear was so bad she
couldn't see right. She was so high above the ocean that she was dizzy. The
temperature was starting to get to her now and she felt the coldness of it rub
against her skin.
"Oh, God!" she cried,
too petrified to care what she said. Jack held her tighter and moved to her
side so he could talk to her better. She could feel his warm breath in her damp
curls. Several men, all at once, let go of the ship and tumbled and crashed
below, landing with a splash in the Atlantic. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" She
repeated the same phrase over and over, in a way showing her fear and in
another truly calling for the Lord's deliverance from such true hell.
As the very end of the stern
reached closer and closer to that shiny black surface, she vaguely heard a
voice next to her. When she realized it was Jack, she froze to listen.
"The ship is gonna suck us
down," he was saying, squeezing her hand so hard it felt like her knuckles
were cracking. She didn't care. She tried to squeeze his harder as if to ward
off the coming doom.
"Take a deep breath when I
say," he continued. "Kick for the surface and keep kicking! Do not
let go of my hand."
She nodded to show she
understood, but in truth she was still comprehending his words. She would never
let him go, not ever.
"We're gonna make it,
Rose," he yelled over the roar of the now extremely close water. He seemed
to be certain of it himself, and trying to reassure her. If only she could feel
the same. "Trust me."
She remembered another time about
trust--the sunset and breeze, the feeling of two souls becoming one...her Jack
would never mislead her.
"I trust you!"
He turned from her and shifted
his gaze below him. There was no time left. She could feel the spray on her
skin.
"Ready? Ready?" Jack
tried to prepare her, but she wasn't ready. She wanted to scream no, but before
she could, he yelled, "Now!"