Chapter 18: The Doctor's Dilemma
They slept, if it could be called that, huddled on the plastic-covered mattress, the towel bunching beneath them. It was less sleep and more a periodic loss of consciousness, startled awake by the unfamiliar groan of plumbing, by a motorbike ripping down Heger Strasse at three a.m., by the sheer, exposed feeling of lying on a floor in a city that owed them nothing. Dom remained awake for most of it, his back to the wall, cataloging sounds.
At first light, a weak gray seepage through the uncurtained window, Sarah stirred. She tried to sit up and failed, a low groan escaping her. Dom was already on his feet, his body stiff.
“What?”
“My back,” she whispered, her face pale. “It’s… locked.”
Panic, cold and immediate, sliced through him. He crouched, his hands hovering. “Is it them? Are you—”
“No, no,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Just everything. The train, the mattress… everything.” She managed to roll onto her side, pushing herself up with trembling arms. “We need a real bed. Today.”
It was the first item on a list that felt miles long. The cold, barren reality of the flat was oppressive in the dawn. They had a key, a creaking floor, a wild garden, and two names. They had nothing to eat, no way to heat water, no pillows, no curtains, no past and a future that was currently a screaming void of need.
Dom used the last of their bottled water to wet a corner of the towel for Sarah to wipe her face. The ritual felt pathetic. He hated it.
“We go out,” he said, his voice rough. “We get basics. Food.A kettle. A pot. Then we find a bed.”
Sarah just nodded, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. She looked very young, and impossibly fragile. “We need to find a doctor, too.Soon. To establish… Marta Vogel.” She practiced the name, anchoring herself.
The thought of a clinic, of officials, of paperwork, made his skin prickle. But she was right. It was non-negotiable. The forgeries had to be tested somewhere small first, before the big, final exam of the birth itself.
They left the flat at nine, two ghosts in the sober morning light. The bakery next door was emitting a smell so divine it was almost cruel—yeast, sugar, roasted nuts. Dom bought a bag of still-warm Brötchen and two paper cups of terrible, weak coffee. They ate standing on the sidewalk, the steam from the coffee mingling with their breath. It was the best food he could remember tasting. Normal people ate breakfast on the street. Lukas and Marta Vogel might.
The supermarket was a fifteen-minute walk, a sprawling, fluorescent-lit temple of abundance. The sheer scale of it was paralyzing. Sarah stopped just inside the automatic doors, her hand tightening on the handle of the empty shopping trolley. The aisles stretched into infinity, packed with colors and choices.Cheese. There were fifty kinds of cheese. Milk came in glass bottles, plastic jugs, cartons, lactose-free, full-fat, almond. Her breath started coming short and sharp.
Dom took the trolley from her. “Follow me,” he said, his voice low and steady. He didn’t look at the options.He hunted. Pasta, the cheapest kind. A large bag of rice. A dozen eggs. A block of butter. A simple steel kettle. Two pots, one large, one small. A package of cheap towels. A four-pack of toilet paper. He moved with a grim efficiency, grabbing the most basic version of everything. He didn’t comparison shop. He conquered.
Sarah followed in his wake, adding a bag of apples and a jar of honey almost furtively, as if it were an extravagance. At the checkout, he paid in cash from the thick envelope Kurt had provided. The bored cashier barely glanced at them.
Carrying the bags back was a silent, grueling trek. The weight cut into Dom’s palms. Sarah carried the lighter bag, stopping every few minutes to shift her balance. The flat, when they returned, was somehow colder for knowing they now owned a kettle.
Dom got the radiator going again. He filled the kettle from the tap in the tiny bathroom, the water running rusty for a full minute before clearing. They drank tea made from bags Kurt had included in the initial supplies, sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall beneath the window. The hot liquid was a slow thaw.
“The bed,” Sarah said, staring into her cup.
Finding furniture meant venturing further, interacting. A bed was a big purchase. It would require delivery. It would leave a trail. Dom felt the old paranoia, the inmate’s calculation of risk and exposure, rise in his throat. He swallowed it with the dregs of his tea.
There was a second-hand shop three streets over, tucked beneath a railway arch. It smelled of dust and lemon polish, a dense cavern of other people’s cast-offs. An elderly man with a magnifying glass on a cord around his neck was repairing a clock. He looked up, his eyes milky but sharp.
“We need a bed,” Dom said, forcing his voice into a tone that was just polite enough. “A double. And a table. Two chairs.”
The man nodded, putting down his tiny screwdriver. “In the back. Not pretty, but solid. Come.”
The bed was a simple wooden frame with a slatted base. The mattress was separate, covered in a faded floral pattern, but it was clean and, when Dom pushed a hand into it, firm. The table was scratched pine. The chairs mismatched, both sturdy. It would do.
“Two hundred for the lot,” the man said. “Another fifty for delivery this afternoon.”
Dom counted out the bills. The man wrote a receipt on a pink slip, his handwriting a slow, spidery scrawl. He asked for an address.
Dom gave it without hesitation. Lukas Vogel. Heger Strasse 42, rear building, third floor. The name was a shield. Using it felt like a kind of blasphemy, but it worked. The old man nodded, folded the money, and went back to his clock.
They spent the afternoon putting a life together. The delivery came at four: two taciturn teenagers who hauled the furniture up the stairs with a bored intensity, dropped it in the middle of the room, and left. The space transformed instantly. It was no longer a squat; it was a sparse, but legitimate, living space. Dom assembled the bedframe. Sarah wiped down every surface with a damp rag, her movements slow and deliberate. They made the bed with the new towels as a makeshift bottom sheet, then the blanket from the safe house. It looked like what it was: a refugee’s bed. But it was off the floor.
Sarah lay down on it experimentally, staring at the water-stained ceiling. “It’s heaven,” she breathed. Then she shifted, and her face changed. “Dom.”
He was at the side of the bed in two strides. “What?”
She took his hand, guided it to the side of her belly, just above her hip. He felt it immediately: a hard, distinct lump, like a small knee or an elbow, pushing out against the taut skin. It moved, a slow, deliberate roll under his palm. It wasn’t the frantic flutter of before. This was purposeful. This was a presence.
He couldn’t speak. He just left his hand there, feeling the sheer otherness of it, the undeniable reality. This was Leo. Or Ivy. A person, biding its time.
The moment broke with a violent cramp that tightened Sarah’s whole body. She gasped, her fingers digging into his wrist. It lasted twenty seconds, a wave of internal pressure that left her panting. “Braxton Hicks,” she said, repeating Greta’s term like a prayer. “It’s fine. It’s practice.”
But the incident crystallized the next, unavoidable step. They couldn’t wait. The performance had to begin.
The following morning, they walked towards the medical district. Dom had the Familienpass and their insurance cards in his inner pocket. Sarah wore the too-big sweater, her hair in a neat, simple ponytail. She walked slowly, one hand under her belly. They looked, he hoped, like any anxious, expectant couple from a modest background.
The district was a different world. It was all gleaming glass, polished steel, and purposeful landscaping. New mothers with expensive prams walked along manicured paths. Every building screamed competence and expense. And surveillance. Dom’s eyes, trained in prison yards, picked them out instantly: the sleek black domes at every entrance, the subtle cameras integrated into light posts.
He tightened his arm around Sarah’s waist, pulling her closer as they passed the front of a particularly slick Frauenklinik. His eyes scanned the door. Electronic entry system. A receptionist visible behind glass. A logo.
“Not this one,” he muttered into her hair, steering her gently away. It was too corporate, too many layers. Their story was thin; it wouldn’t withstand that much scrutiny.
They turned down a quieter street, older, lined with buildings from the fifties. The façades were worn, the signs painted, not backlit. And there it was. A simple, white placard with blue lettering, swinging slightly in the wind: Dr. med. Anya Voss, Fachärztin für Gynäkologie & Geburtshilfe. The paint was flaking. The building was a narrow, three-story house converted to offices. There was a small, frosted glass door. No visible camera.
“Here,” Dom said.It felt right. It felt small.
The waiting room smelled of antiseptic and old magazines. It was warm. A heavyset woman in her sixties with kind eyes and a severe bun looked up from behind a sliding glass panel. “Guten Tag. Do you have an appointment?”
Dom’s German was functional, but this was a minefield. He nudged Sarah gently. They’d agreed she would speak; her accent was better, softer.
“No,” Sarah said, her voice clear but small. “We are new in the city. I am… I am pregnant. We need a doctor.” She placed the green insurance card on the counter. “We have insurance.”
The woman, whose nameplate read Helga, took the card. She examined it, then looked at Sarah’s belly, her expression shifting into one of professional concern. “Twins,” she stated, not asked.
“Yes.”
“And how far along?”
“Thirty-two weeks,” Sarah said, the number Greta had drilled into them. “We moved from… from Gifhorn. For my husband’s work.” She gestured weakly to Dom.
Helga looked at him. Dom met her gaze, gave a single, tight nod. Lukas Vogel, carpenter, strong silent type. He hoped that’s what she saw.
“Normally, we are fully booked,” Helga said, clicking her tongue. “But for twins, and so late…” She consulted a large, paper diary. “Frau Doktor Voss has a cancellation. You can see her in one hour. Can you wait?”
Relief, so potent it felt like weakness, washed over Dom.He nodded again. “We can wait.”
They sat on worn vinyl chairs. Sarah picked up a parenting magazine, her hands trembling slightly as she turned the pages. Dom stared at a poster detailing the stages of fetal development. He saw the little figurine at thirty-two weeks, fully formed, just putting on weight. His children were that size now.Inside her. The reality of it was a physical blow.
An hour later, Helga called, “Frau Vogel?”
They were shown into a compact, clean office.Dr. Anya Voss was a woman in her late forties, with a tired, intelligent face and sharp eyes that missed nothing. She shook their hands, her grip dry and firm. She had Sarah’s new file—created from the insurance card—open on her desk.
“So, Frau Vogel, you come to us very late in your pregnancy,” Dr. Voss began, her tone neutral but not unkind. She spoke directly to Sarah. “Your records from Gifhorn have not been forwarded yet.”
“It was… a sudden move,” Sarah said, repeating their story. “The practice there was very old-fashioned. Paper only.”
Dr. Voss hummed, unconvinced but willing to proceed. She asked a barrage of medical history questions. Sarah answered, sticking to the script they’d constructed with Greta: no major illnesses, no family history of defects, a previous miscarriage they’d invented to explain the lack of earlier prenatal records. Dom watched the doctor’s face, looking for cracks in their façade. She wrote everything down.
Then came the examination. Dom was asked to wait outside. He stood in the hall, his shoulders tense, listening to the muffled sounds from the room. He heard the rustle of paper, the low murmur of the doctor’s voice, the soft beep of a machine. He felt utterly useless. His job was to stand guard in a hallway that needed no guarding.
After twenty minutes, Sarah emerged, her face pale. The doctor followed, her expression now markedly different. The professional neutrality was gone, replaced by a focused concern.
“Herr Vogel,” she said, turning to him. “Your wife and babies are physically healthy. Strong heartbeats. Good positioning, for now.” She paused, her eyes flicking between them. “But she is severely anemic. Her blood pressure is borderline. And she is carrying significant… psychological stress. This is not good for her, or for the babies. She needs rest. Proper nutrition. And calm.”
Dom felt accused. He was failing. Lukas Vogel was failing.
“We are settling in,” he said, the words lame.
“See that you do,” Dr. Voss said, her tone allowing no argument. She handed Sarah a slip of paper. “These are the supplements.Start today. I will see you weekly from now on. Any pain, any bleeding, any change at all, you call Helga immediately.” Her gaze landed on Dom, holding it. “You take care of her. Yes?”
He nodded, the muscle in his jaw working. “Yes.”
Back on the street, the cold air was a shock. Sarah clung to the prescription paper like a lifeline. She was silent for a long time.
“She knew,” Sarah whispered finally, as they turned onto their street. The creaking sign for the second-hand shop swayed in the distance. “Not the specifics, but… she knew we were hiding.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dom said, his voice low. “She’s a doctor. She cares about the medical facts. That’s all we need from her.” He pulled her closer, feeling the weight of her against him, the weight of the doctor’s orders. “We get the pills. We cook proper food. You rest.”
They bought the supplements at an Apotheke, a small temple of polished wood and cool air. Back in the flat, Dom filled the new kettle. Sarah sat at the new table, tracing the wood grain with a finger. The room was still mostly empty, but it now held a narrative: a bed, a table, a doctor’s appointment, a prescription.
Dom placed a mug of tea in front of her, then set two of the large iron pills beside it. She looked at them, then up at him.
“Ivy and Leo,” she said. “We have a doctor.”
“We have a doctor,” he confirmed. It was a foothold. A tiny, legitimate piece of ground in the vast, uncertain terrain ahead. The medical district with its cameras felt miles away. Here, there was only the hiss of the radiator, the coming dark outside the uncurtained window, and the silent, growing proof of their fragile, manufactured lives.
The iron pills left a rusted taste in Sarah’s mouth that even the tea couldn’t wash away. She stared at the dusty rectangle on the wall where a previous tenant’s television had been, a monument to a normal life they’d never have. “We need curtains,” she said, her voice flat. “And more than one blanket.”
Dom nodded, already mentally counting the cash left in the envelope beneath a loose floorboard near the radiator. The calculation was grim. The furniture, the doctor, the groceries—it was draining faster than he’d allowed himself to admit. Kurt’s money wasn’t infinite. They needed a source, and soon, but the thought of Sarah alone in this flat while he chased underworld odd jobs made his stomach knot.
He forced the worry down. One thing at a time. “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll get curtains.”
That night, the new bed was both a relief and a strange new territory. The springs sighed under their combined weight. They lay stiffly, a careful inch of mattress between them, listening to the unfamiliar architecture of the building: a toilet
The springs sighed under their combined weight. They lay stiffly, a careful inch of mattress between them, listening to the unfamiliar architecture of the building: a toilet flushing somewhere above, the gurgle of pipes inside the walls, a distant siren that rose and fell like a lost animal. The streetlight cast long, skeletal shadows from the window frame across the ceiling.
“I keep waiting for the bell,” Sarah whispered into the dark. “For the doors to slam shut.”
Dom knew that specific silence, the one that followed lockdown. It was a weight you carried in your bones. Here, the silence was different. It was full of city sounds, but it felt wider, more exposing. “No bells here,” he said, his voice rough. “Just cars.”
She turned onto her side, facing him, the mattress dipping. He could see the faint gleam of her eyes. “What if I can’t do this, Dom? Be Marta. What if I say the wrong thing to the doctor next time?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.” Her whisper was sharp, frayed. “I lied to her face today. I lied about a miscarriage. Who does that?”
“Someone who’s surviving,” he said. He turned his head toward her. “The doctor saw a pregnant woman who’s scared. That’s not a lie. That’s the truest thing in the room.” He surprised himself with the words. They felt like something Greta might have said, and he held onto them.
Sarah was quiet for a long moment. The radiator ticked. “What are you afraid of?”
The question hung in the dark. He considered evasion, a grunt, a deflection. But the darkness and the shared pillow made truth feel like the only currency they had left. “Running out of cash before they come,” he admitted, the words like stones. “Of you needing something I can’t get. Of a cop at the door asking for papers I didn’t check well enough.” He breathed out. “Of holding them.”
Her hand found his on the blanket between them. Her fingers were cold. “You checked the papers. Kurt’s forgeries are good.”
“Kurt’s a crook.”
“We’re crooks,” she said, and he heard a faint, rueful smile in her voice. “Or we were. Now we’re… people who buy kettles.”
A short, rough sound escaped him, almost a laugh. It felt strange in his throat. “Lukas Vogel, kettle buyer.”
“See? It’s convincing.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m afraid of the pain. I’m afraid I’ll scream and bring the whole building down on us. I’m afraid I won’t know how to love them right.” Her voice hitched. “I’m afraid they’ll look at me and see… her. The girl from the visiting room.”
He shifted then, rolling onto his side to face her fully, their hands still clasped. The inch of mattress vanished. He could feel the warmth of her, the curve of her belly against his. “They’ll see you,” he said, the words low and certain. “They’ll see the person who carried them out of hell. That’s all they’ll know.”
She cried softly.
It wasn’t a sob, but a silent, steady release. Tears tracked hot lines from the corners of her eyes into the hair at her temples. Her shoulders shook once, then settled into a subtle, relentless tremor. She didn’t hide it or turn away. She just let it happen in the shared dark, her grip on his hand anchoring her.
Dom didn’t shush her. He didn’t tell her it would be okay. He moved his free hand, his thumb brushing the wetness from her cheek. The salt taste of it on his skin was a more profound testament than any document in Kurt’s envelope. This was real. This was the cost.
After a while, the tears slowed. Her breathing evened out, deepening. The streetlight shifted, a shadow moving across the wall. Somewhere, the night train rumbled through the district, a sound like distant thunder.
“We need curtains,” she murmured, her voice thick and spent.
“Tomorrow,” he promised again.
She nodded, her eyelashes fluttering against his thumb. Her body softened, the last of the tension leaching away into sleep’s slow pull. He watched her, memorizing the pattern of her breathing, the way her lips parted slightly. He listened until the sounds of the building faded into a white noise, until the only thing that mattered was the steady, vital proof of her, warm and alive against him.
He did not sleep. He kept watch over the shadows, over the woman, over the future, a sentinel in their first, fragile sanctuary.