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The year was 1907, a time of candlelight medicine and whispered prayers. In a quiet English town surrounded by fog and forest, Dr. Samantha Avery had just turned twenty-four. Her patients adored her — the way she smiled even when the world felt grim, how her steady hands seemed to bring hope.
A week after her birthday, Samantha fell ill. No one knew why — no wound, no fever, no poison. She simply stopped breathing one night in her bed, eyes closed as if in peace. They buried her behind St. Hallow's Church under a willow tree that wept its leaves upon her grave.
But Samantha did not stay buried.
When her eyes opened again, she was still in the same coffin — the scent of roses wilted into rot. Panic should have taken her, but she felt none. She pushed the lid open easily, climbed from the earth, and brushed the dirt from her dress. Her skin was pale as winter frost, her pulse silent, her body cold, yet her mind remained bright and clear.
She walked back to her old house, where the fire had long gone out. Her reflection no longer fogged the glass, but her face was still her own — unaged, unbroken. Days turned into years, and she learned that she could still move, still think, still be. But she was no longer part of the living.
The townsfolk began to whisper of a ghostly woman who wandered at dusk — her shadow thin, her eyes too calm. Some called her a curse, others a miracle. Samantha didn't care for either. She simply continued doing what she knew best — healing.
She visited the sick under moonlight, when no one dared to wake. Her touch soothed fever. Her cold hands closed wounds. Her name faded from the town's memory, but stories of "The Pale Doctor" spread like mist.
Then came the year 1912.
By now, Samantha had learned that time was not her master. Her clothes had changed to match the new decade, her voice softer, wiser. One morning, while reading the newspaper in a small café, she saw an article:
> "The RMS Titanic to embark on her maiden voyage this April."
The story fascinated her — a great ship said to be "unsinkable," sailing to the New World. She imagined the smell of salt air, the promise of change, the hum of life all around her. For the first time in years, she felt something close to excitement. Perhaps across the ocean, she could find a reason for her strange existence.
She sold what little she owned, bought a third-class ticket under the name Miss S. Avery, and packed her doctor's bag. The voyage would leave from Southampton in the early morning.
But fate, it seemed, still held her hand.
On the day of departure, as Samantha walked toward the port, her hat tilted against the breeze, she saw an old woman collapse near a market stall. People shouted, unsure what to do. Instinct moved her faster than thought — she knelt beside the woman.
"Madam, can you hear me?" Samantha asked softly.
The woman's daughter, a girl barely twenty, clutched her mother's trembling hand. "Please—she's been sick for months. No doctor could help."
Samantha placed her cold palm on the woman's chest. Her heart — weak, fluttering, fading. She could sense pain coursing through her, as though the air itself vibrated with it. For a fleeting moment, Samantha thought, If only I could take it away.
And then, impossibly, she did.
A chill surged from her fingertips, and she felt the woman's pain slip into her own body — the ache of bones, the wheeze of broken lungs, the shadow of disease. But to Samantha, these things meant nothing. Her body, already dead, could not suffer.
The woman gasped — once, twice — and then breathed freely, her color returning. "The pain," she whispered, "it's gone."
Samantha smiled faintly, even as her own body quivered with invisible sickness that could not claim her.
When she stood to leave, the daughter clutched her sleeve. "You saved her! How can I thank you?"
"There's no need," Samantha said, brushing off the dirt. "Just take care of her."
By the time she reached the docks, the great Titanic had already left the harbor. The ocean stretched wide and empty, and the ship was nothing more than a pale line on the horizon.
Samantha stood there for hours, watching the waves fold over themselves. She had missed her chance. But somehow, she didn't feel regret.
Because as she looked at her hands — the same hands that once healed, once dug themselves out of the grave — she understood something new. Her strange existence wasn't a punishment. It was a duty.
She could take suffering, absorb it, make others whole. She was no longer merely a doctor. She was something else entirely — a vessel for pain that could never die.
In the weeks that followed, people in nearby towns began to speak of a wandering woman in pale gloves, who appeared when illness struck. She never asked for money. She never stayed long. The ones she touched always recovered, and though they tried to thank her, she would be gone by morning.
Some said she was an angel. Others whispered she was Death herself, in borrowed flesh.
Years later, Samantha would read about the Titanic's fate — the iceberg, the lost souls, the freezing sea. And she would close her eyes, knowing that if she had boarded, she might have saved a few — but not all. Perhaps fate had stopped her that morning for a reason.
She walked the countryside under a moon that never seemed to dim, her reflection still unchanging, her body still cold. In the stillness of every night, she could almost hear the faint beating of other hearts — the ones she had saved.
And though her own heart remained silent, she found comfort in that rhythm.
The Pale Doctor continued her lonely path, healing the world one quiet miracle at a time, while the years passed her by like ghostly tides — until history forgot her name, but the kindness of her touch endured in stories that would never die.