Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Sixty-Three
7th February 1958
Berlin
The weather was the news. All of Germany had practically been shut down by icy conditions and just when they thought that it would lift there was another storm that dumped more snow. On the car ride to work that morning which Kat had given her so that Ilse wouldn’t have to walk to the subway, there had been news on the radio about how the Manchester United Football team had been stuck in Munich overnight and was having to take the train home after the airports had been closed down by the weather. Footballers complaining about the weather was an indication of just how bad it was out there. Fortunately, classes at the University were not cancelled today. That had resulted in this appointment having to be rescheduled a few different times already and Ilse’s only conspirator was a less than dependable sixteen-year-old who had her own schedule and personal issues. As much as Ilse hated to be sneaking around behind her sister’s back, but as she had said weeks earlier to Kiki, she didn’t want to see Kat smugly gloating over some trifling health issue. Ilse had seen Kat when she thought that she had one up on someone a few different times and didn’t think that she could stand being on the receiving end of that on top of everything else.
Instead of going to her lab, Ilse had gone to the University Clinic. Because of the blizzard the Casualty Department was crowded but the rest of the hospital was relatively quiet with a minimum of staff. It was Kiki who had suggested this to her. If as Ilse figured, nothing untoward was found, she would be in a position to tell her sister, her Mother-in-Law and anyone else where they could stick their concern. It was something that Ilse was actually looking forward to. Meeting Kiki’s mentor, Doctor Berg as a patient as opposed to being amused by watching her battles with Kat was not a welcome experience.
“My specialty is as an FG, but I am a fully qualified General Practitioner as well” Doctor Berg had said when Ilse had entered her office, “Being able to deal with any emergency is something that is insisted on.”
Ilse remembered that Nora Berg had been assigned to care for Kat because at the time her rank in the Medical Service was greater than that of Kat’s. Much to Kat’s annoyance she couldn’t just order Doctor Berg to get out of her house and not come back. To Ilse’s surprise, Berg had her complete medical files on hand. All five of the bulging accordion files. “You’ve led an interesting life for someone so young” Was all Berg said on the subject before producing the equipment for drawing Ilse’s blood.
What followed was an hour of getting poked and prodded as Doctor Berg conducted the physical part of the examination. Finally, Berg stopped and was poking Ilse abdomen for a few minutes. She had a frown on her face but had not said anything before she had told Ilse to put her clothes back on. By the time Ilse made into Berg’s office she saw that Berg had her file open and was reading one of the records from thirteen years earlier.
“You said that your periods have been highly irregular since you were thirteen?” Berg said, “Your health in that regard was neglected until you were fifteen when you were finally taken in to see a Doctor?”
“Yes” Ilse replied.
“It says here that your Doctor at the time concluded that even if you were not infertile, you would have a difficult time conceiving” Berg said.
“He told me that it would be almost impossible for me to get pregnant” Ilse replied, “That has been my experience since, I’ve been with my husband for the last three years and never had any scares.”
“Are you saying that you’ve never bothered with contraception?” Berg asked. She would never say so but from the look on her face it was clear that Berg thought that Ilse had been acting stupidly.
“What would have been the point?” Ilse asked in reply.
“The point, Elisabeth, is that you are either pregnant but not showing yet or you have advanced cancer. Pregnancy is the more likely culprit in my opinion” Berg said matter of fact, “I’m going to arrange an ultrasound so that we can get a picture of what is going on in there, but that will take a few days. Your bloodwork will also be revealing when we get it back in a day or so. Are you sure that we shouldn’t call your sister? Whenever she is present it really lights a fire under the lab techs. Is your husband aware of any of this?”
At that moment Ilse was trying to get her mind to process what she had just heard and trying not to panic. She couldn’t string the words together to answer any of those questions.
“I… I was told that it was a… almost impossible” Ilse stammered.
“That seems to have been said in error” Berg replied.
The only thought that Ilse had that seemed to have any coherence was that Kat was going never, ever going to let her hear the end of this, not in a million years. Minutes later she was walking out of the office with Kiki who had waited out in corridor for her.
“What happened in there?” Kiki asked as Ilse stood numbly in the hospital corridor. “Doctor Berg ruthlessly enforces patient confidentiality, so you’ll need to tell me what is going on.”
Ilse looked at Kiki who was naïvely expecting an answer. It was all too much, Ilse felt light-headed and sick to her stomach. If she started talking to Kiki, then she would start babbling.
