If Tomorrow Never Comes

Can Anybody Hear Me?

Andy pulled on the pipe with all her strength. It wasn't budging. She heard an all too familiar gurgling sound of rushing water, and she turned to find it pouring from under the door, spreading rapidly across the floor.

"Shit. No, no, no!" She stood up on the table nearest to her, avoiding the water as she attempting to pull one hand out of the cuffs until her skin was raw. It was no good.

"Help!! Somebody!! Can Anybody hear me?!" she screamed. There was no one to hear her.

...

Miranda was breathless by the time she found Mr. Andrews along the first class corridor. He was checking staterooms, making sure people were out.

"Mr. Andrews, thank God! Where would the Master at Arms take someone under arrest?" Miranda huffed out.

The ship builder looked confused.

"What? You have to get to a boat right away!" he said and began trying to guide her along.

"No! I'll do this with or without your help, sir. But without will take longer."

Andrews was beat, and finally gave in to the desperate woman.

"Take the elevator to the very bottom, go left, down the crewman's passage, then make a right."

"Bottom, left, right," Miranda repeated. "I have it."

"Hurry, Miranda."

She sprinted away and ran up as the last elevator operator was closing up his lift to leave.

"Sorry, miss, but the lifts are closed--"

Without thinking, Miranda grabbed him and shoved him back into the lift.

"I will not be polite, goddamnit!! Being polite gets you nowhere in life! Now take me down!!"

The operator fumbled to close the gate, but started the lift.

...

Nigel and two seamen were rowing, and they had made it about a hundred feet or so away from the ship, able to see that it was angled down into the water with the bow rail less than ten feet above the surface.

He stopped rowing for a moment and just glared at the spectacle of the great liner, its rows of lights blazing, slanting down into the sullen black mirror of the Atlantic. He gripped a small fur coat in his hands where he tried to hold onto Cassidy Priestly, but the girl slipped out of it and jumped back onto Titanic with her twin. He was consumed with guilt. What was to happen when Miranda discovered his promise had not been kept?

...

Through the wrought iron door of the elevator car, Miranda could see the decks going past. It slowed and suddenly ice water was swirling around her legs. She screamed in surprise and so did the operator.

The car had landed in three feet of freezing water, shocking the hell out of her.

"I'm going back up, I'm going back up!" the operator yelped.

"No!" Miranda shouted and reached to claw the door open, hiking up her floor length skirt so she could move across the water. The lift went back up behind her, the most reliable transportation gone. Her eyes scanned the area around her.

"Left, crew passage," Miranda muttered to herself as she slogged through the flooded corridor. She spotted it and hauled herself through the water. The place was understandably deserted, and she was now on her own.

"Right, right... right."

She turned into a cross-corridor, splashing down the hall. A row of doors on each side.