Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

Part 130, Chapter 2208
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Eight



8th April 1973

Tempelhof, Berlin

For Kat, the breakfast meetings with the women she had close relationships with over the last few decades were something that she did to try to maintain a connection with the reality on the ground. Increasingly, she felt that she was isolated behind layers of security and her own reputation had driven many people away for long time before that. Having Gerta and Helene present at the same time was a rare treat these days, even if they seemed to be spending a lot of time grousing about what their adult children were up to. Kat’s nephew and god daughter were who they were mostly talking about in a manner that was deeply ironic considering their own personal histories. There was still an annual ride through the streets of Berlin every autumn by the German Cavalry along with representatives from various other countries entirely because of Gerta’s inability to get herself together a couple decades earlier. With Manny and Suse, they would do things at their own pace or else they wouldn’t do things at all, parental approval be damned.

The other thing this morning was that Nancy seemed troubled after she had spoken with her son earlier this week. It seemed that her youngest daughter was totally miserable with her present lot, but Gretchen wasn’t the sort who would complain. Only endure. Kat had said that it reminded her of someone who she had known a few decades earlier. Nancy had asked about whom she was talking? There was also, Nancy’s oldest daughter having grown into a selfish, ruthless little bitch who was almost impossible to control. Kat refrained from telling her that Anna was truly Tilo’s daughter and that like him, it wouldn’t be until life knocked her down a time or two that she would start to come around. For Tilo that had come in the form of the Marine Infantry and a walking tour of Vietnam, China, the Russian Far East, and finally Korea that had lasted several years. Kat had no idea what the equivalent for a young woman might look like.

Later, when Kat was talking with Doug, he found it all amusing. Nancy and Tilo’s careers kept them incredibly busy which was why they had many of the problems they presently had. Children who felt that the adults in their life ignored them tended to act out. Sometimes a firm hand was needed. Unfortunately for Nancy, it seemed that the wrong daughter had landed in the Prussian Institute. At least, that was Kat’s opinion.



Mitte, Berlin

Of all the times for things to go sideways. Sigi had been trying to get her mother’s affairs straightened out and that had taken months. The house on Potsdam had already been deemed an uninhabitable ruin, it had needed to be torn down before the land could be sold. Then just as Sigi had thought that she had gotten things under control several things happened that had upended everything. After how difficult it had been getting her mother to go along with the necessary course of action, Astrid von Grimmelshausen died as the result of multiple organ failure. Jay Parker hated to even think it, but it would have been better for everyone if that had happened last July before he and Sigi had come from Spain.

There had been a blizzard of paperwork with a lot of red tape to cut through to transfer the estate to Sigi. There had come the moment when the executors of her grandfather’s estate were finally deservedly sacked, but Sigi had not been able to enjoy it because she had gotten sick. At first, they had thought that the constant stress of the situation over several months had worn her down and made her vulnerable to a viral infection. Then it had turned out not to be a case of the flu and that changed everything when Sigi had found out that she was pregnant.

For Sigi, this had resulted in a phone call to her nephew to keep the weight of the military and academia off her back. Parker had a hard time reckoning with just who Freddy was even though he had met him several times by now. What that resulted in was an awkward conversation in car from the airport about why they were having a courthouse wedding where the paperwork had to be expedited and Parker had found it difficult to explain just who Sigi’s family was. Mostly because it sounded totally insane.

Kristina, Sigi’s niece had helped somewhat because as a Doctor she was used to having difficult conversations with people. Of course, Kiki telling Parker a few minutes later that compared to telling someone that they were forced to amputate or that it was inoperable, saying that a young couple was having to get married because contraception had failed was nothing. It was then that Parker realized that Kiki was and wasn’t joking when she said that. In the end, Parker’s father seemed more bothered by the fact that golf wasn’t really a thing in Germany beyond some exclusive clubs and hadn’t made the connection with the name Hohenzollern and the Kaiser. His mother clearly had several questions but was waiting until they could talk at leisure without the walls having so many ears. That and to make sure that his father wasn’t allowed anywhere near someone who he could try to give a sales pitch to, she understood that Sigi’s family took a very dim view on anything that might be fraud these days.
 
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ferdi254

Banned
The pearl index in that story is sky high. That is now at least the third woman getting pregnant despite contraceptives.

It seems the only thing working reliably is a scalpel.
 
The pearl index in that story is sky high. That is now at least the third woman getting pregnant despite contraceptives.

It seems the only thing working reliably is a scalpel.
Welcome to real life. The best methods are not perfect. BC pills are 91 percent effective for example and 42 percent of all pregnancies happen despite measures taken. Women who are in stressful situations are more likely to mess things up. So, Sigi having this happen while dealing with her mother's death is almost inevitable.

Regrettably, the scalpel is most effective means but even that is not 100 percent effective.
 
And now I have to decide to reread the story to go back to all the delicious foreshadowing regarding Parkers family...
On another note, did I read that right? The executors were fraudulent with Sigis estate? Olala that will start a fire of enforced checks in this industry after her and the royal family had done it to.
 
And now I have to decide to reread the story to go back to all the delicious foreshadowing regarding Parkers family...
On another note, did I read that right? The executors were fraudulent with Sigis estate? Olala that will start a fire of enforced checks in this industry after her and the royal family had done it to.
No, but they were not particularly kind to Sigi or her mother. Tragically typical in this era where it wasn't uncommon for an heiress to be totally dispossessed. This happened in OTL right up until the 80's.
 
In the end, Parker’s father seemed more bothered by the fact that golf wasn’t really a thing in Germany beyond some exclusive clubs and hadn’t made the connection with the name Hohenzollern and the Kaiser. His mother clearly had several questions but was waiting until they could talk at leisure without the walls having so many ears. That and to make sure that his father wasn’t allowed anywhere near someone who he could try to give a sales pitch to, she understood that Sigi’s family took a very dim view on anything that might be fraud these days.
It looks as if Parker's father is still clueless about things outside his circle back home. His mother, on the other hand, seems to have registered the drop of the penny, realised that Sigi's family makes her family look like 'new' money, and is now wanting to have a Talk. Plus grand-babies, of course.
The pearl index in that story is sky high. That is now at least the third woman getting pregnant despite contraceptives.

It seems the only thing working reliably is a scalpel.

Regrettably, the scalpel is most effective means but even that is not 100 percent effective.
As my sister & brother-in-law discovered 13 years ago. Which is why they have 4 daughters instead of 3.
 

ferdi254

Banned
Well the pearl index of the pill is 0.3 if used by the book and 8 IRL. But at least two of the three women would have been quite anal about matters.
 
Jay's mother was already impressed by Sigi's accomplishments before she knew about the two of them being together and while Sigi's money is older in the end money is money and it still spends the same no matter how old or new it is.
I doubt that Jay's father is in to anything remotely fraudulent because those types of high financial crimes have a very short half life before being discovered (see Bernie Madoff) and the Hohenzollern Trust is not going to make any major investments that are not rock solid Triple-A rated securities but he can always try later but not now until he can prove that he is trustworthy.
Anna is going to be knocked down soon by life and one of the things Kat missed about how Tilo grew to be better was that he had someone like Reier every step of the way on the walking tour and Anna is going to find out the hard way that she needs someone like that in her life.
Once again Gretchen would be better off staying at the Tigress Home for Exceptional Young Ladies and just as how Nancy and Anne were beneficial to the Sisterhood by showing the Sisterhood that normal people would accept them and be friends with them without being judgemental about their past Gretchen would show Sophie and Ziska that an otherwise normal person is willing to be friends with them without wanting anything in return.
 
Part 130, Chapter 2209
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Nine



9th April 1973

Tempelhof, Berlin

The Hospital was so familiar to Kiki that it felt like home. Just like in years past she agreed to meet with Doctor Berg in the Cafeteria. Unlike when she had been a student everyone knew that she was a Field Surgeon who worked out of Emergency Department of the Fredrich-Wilhelm University Hospital of Berlin, Humboldt Campus. That made her one of the elites among the Hospital’s Staff. That was reflected in how they responded whenever she asked for something.

It wasn’t until Kiki saw the bemused look on Berg’s face after she made sure that her lunch was in coming to her table. Kiki tried not to be as heavy handed as her mentor had been, but it was impossible not to see the parallels between then and now. Back then, Berg had made a point of getting Kiki to eat the sort of things that she should have been eating but wasn’t for a variety of reasons mostly relating to being an indifferent teenager. She now had a fairly good idea that Berg had been trying to get Kiki to adopt a set of healthier habits. That success was decidedly mixed.

“Do you have what it asked you for?” Berg asked as Kiki sat down.

“Yes” Kiki replied as she handed Berg an envelope from the pocket of her coat. “Next time just ask me directly with no cloak and dagger nonsense. I would have happily given them to you.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Berg asked with an impish grin.

Kiki was a bit annoyed that Berg liked doing these surreptitiously. Everyone knew that she was Nora Berg’s surrogate daughter and that extended to Nina as well. The envelope contained photographs of Kiki, Benjamin and Nina that were the sort that any parent would expect to receive. Kiki knew that Berg did these things after a lifetime of hiding a large part of who she was from her employers and most the people she knew. With only a few months until Berg retired from the Medical Service, she was sort of past caring what others thought of her. The habits of a lifetime were sort of hard to break though. Berg’s personal life was no one’s business but hers.

“I am just not in the mood for games” Kiki said, “My Aunt is getting married this week and the situation is complicated.”

“No more complicated than any of the dozens of other situations that we see here every day” Berg said as she opened the envelope and was looking at the photographs. “It just happens to be your family this time.”

Kiki frowned and took off her glasses. It was something she did when she didn’t want to deal with the world, as if not being able to see clearly more than a couple of meters would make the problems go away.

“Sigi says that she has been taking birth control pills” Kiki said, “But if she were, how did she end up pregnant and having to get married to Jay Parker in such a hurry? I know that those pills are unlikely to just fail.”

Kiki had talked about what had happened with Berg the week before. She hadn’t mentioned her doubts though.

“As I said, it is only because it is your family this time” Berg said before holding up her hand and raising fingers to emphasize her points. “First, that is what she is telling you then you need to give her the benefit of the doubt no matter how unlikely that seems. Second, most women in Sigi’s situation probably think that they did everything right, though they might not have. Third, she has been in an extremely stressful situation with her mother for some time and little things fall through the cracks when there is a family crisis. Including failing to remember that you were supposed to take a pill at the same time every day. Finally, how do you react when everything is falling apart? Say clinging to your partner for comfort at a difficult time, and you’ve just forgot all about that little package in the medicine cabinet. It is a mistake that anyone could make under those conditions.”

“I get it” Kiki replied, staring at a point on the table right in front of her.

“It is not like she was in denial about being pregnant for several months” Berg said which caused Kiki to give her a livid look before she calmed herself. Kiki knew that Berg was not planning on letting her off the hook for everything that had happened in South America. The situation that Kiki had been in was all too similar. Being the XO of a Medical Services Regiment and exceed the expectations of the job had caused Kiki to ignore what her body had been trying to tell her. She had little room to judge Sigi over matters like these. In her case though, it was because she had not realized that her body had somehow expelled the copper-silver alloy IUD that had been in her uterus. Nina had been the result of that particular oversite. She had replaced it after Nina was born because she had found it far better that the adverse side effects of hormonal birth control. That included having it checked every few months to make sure it was still where it was supposed to be.

“You know that Nina has the same color eyes as you?” Berg said changing the subject back to the photographs as their food arrived. “She is going to be very pretty when she gets older.”
 
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ferdi254

Banned
You do not get a bottle of pills you get a film side which is labeled day by day. So unless you forgot what day it is it is really hard to miss that you had missed a day.
And getting out an IUD that is properly placed is a very painful experience that is really unlikely to happen without getting noticed.

Been there, done that, got the scars.
 
You do not get a bottle of pills you get a film side which is labeled day by day. So unless you forgot what day it is it is really hard to miss that you had missed a day.
And getting out an IUD that is properly placed is a very painful experience that is really unlikely to happen without getting noticed.

Been there, done that, got the scars.
As a male without any personal experience, I always seen it as an Aircrash Investigation. No big cause, but a long series of small things that result in a big surprise after nine months.....
 
My youngest brother is proof that IUDs are not 100% effective and when my mother had her IUD removed in 2013 after over 40 years of being implanted in her, her gynecologist who was in his thirties (this part was relayed to me by my sister who went with my mother) said that he never saw an IUD in a patient that was older then him and wanted to keep it as a curiosity (the IUD not my mother) and I have personally known many women who explained that they have forgotten to take the pill and either tried to "make it up" by taking the previous day pill along with the current day pill or just continue taking the current day pill without taking the previous day pill and 9 months later I am giving a present for the new baby.
 
Things like that happen everywhere, but I think they happen more often in a more prude countries like America etc.
That is also the reason why it always says 99.9% and not 100% safe. XD

Do I understand correctly that Dr. Berg likes women and had to keep it a secret, because of her job? Or was that an indication of something else?
The situation in Germany is probably significantly better than OTL, although it puzzles me that people are not more open about the topic.
All the more because Germany was actually a pioneer in the field of sexology with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft etc.
 
Part 130, Chapter 2210
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Ten



10th April 1973

Tempelhof, Berlin

Walking down the alley towards the back gate of the garden of her parent’s house was something that had never changed for Marie Alexandra. This place had always been home no matter how much things had changed. At the moment, there was a dispute about who in the neighborhood was responsible for maintaining the alley, so Marie was deftly skipping between water filled potholes that were large enough to swallow cars. The Local Council had pointed to the City, the City had pointed to the State, and the State had pointed back at the Local Council. Marie’s mother said that she was about to start shooting them and progress upward until they acted out of self-preservation. Marie had no idea if her mother was joking or not.

Navigating the space between worlds like Marie presently was, wasn’t easy. On one side was the adult world with its expectations and obligations. On the other was childhood with its easy answers that no longer seemed to wash and seemingly boundless time that she no longer had. This especially wasn’t helped by the adults in Marie’s life just barely managing to muddle through at the best of times. All the contradictions and near misses when it came to calamities. Often times, it felt like everyone was only a step or two away from disaster. That was if they had not already driven full speed over the edge.

None of this was helped the rumors that had flown around about Marie while she had been away from her school for a year. Everyone had thought that she was in a rubber room somewhere and doped to the gills after flipping out. The truth, that she had been attending a wretched school that stressed etiquette and social graces had never once entered anyone’s thinking, not even after she had been introduced to the Imperial Court as the new Kammerfräulein. And that was what the people Marie considered friends were saying. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what those who were of a less kindly disposition towards her had to say.

This had consumed Marie’s thoughts. That and being an official friend and companion of Suga was nowhere near as interesting as she had thought it would be. Most of the time was spent helping her organize the various charitable foundations that wanted to collaborate with the Empress of Germany, the generous annual endowment that she dispersed at the end of every fiscal quarter. It brought to mind what her mother had told her about dealing large amounts of other people’s money, so much dirty paper.

Crossing the garden, Marie entered the laundry room and found something that was the perfect metaphor for everything that she had been thinking about. Sophie’s puppy, Sprocket, had somehow gotten himself tangled up in clothes that had been hung up to dry. The line was almost two meters off the floor and for the life of her, Marie had no idea how Sprocket could have managed to do this. Trying to get Sprocket untangled from a shirt and what looked like Tatiana’s underwear proved difficult as he decided that it was a game. The situation was absolutely impossible, and Marie was trying to get Sprocket to hold still so she could free him before he strangled himself when Darya entered the room.

“How on earth…?” Darya asked, sounding bewildered, “I was only gone for a moment.”

As if Sprocket needed more than that to get into trouble.

“Grandmother is going to be furious when she sees this” Darya said in Russian as she tried to put things back in order as they finally freed Sprocket. Everyone in the household knew that with Petia everything had to be just so, or else.

“I won’t tell if you won’t” Marie replied in the same language as she held Sprocket in her arms. Darya had been a willing conspirator for Marie for a long time. Still, both of them knew that it was nearly impossible to keep things from her grandmother.

“If I thought that it would do us any good” Darya said with some exasperation switching back to German. “Grandmother is going to want these things washed, them being full of dog hair is unacceptable.”

“As if you would notice with Tatiana” Marie said, “She always has her knickers in a twist anyway. A little bit of extra itchiness would hardly be noticed.”

“That is a mean thing to say about your sister” Darya said.

“You didn’t say that I am wrong” Marie said as she set Sprocket down on his feet. He instantly ran for the door and gave a greeting to Sophie and Angelica as they entered through the door from the garden as if they had been gone for ages as opposed to just for the school day. Both Marie and Darya gave Sophie a sour look.

“What?” Sophie demanded as she walked past with Sprocket at her heel. Of course, he was well behaved in Sophie’s presence, she thought that he was perfectly behaved all the time because he did that.

“You won’t believe what that little demon did this time” Darya said.

“Sprocket is no demon” Sophie said before marching towards the kitchen. Angelica, followed behind the look on her face one of pure defiance. Marie wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Italian girl who had joined their odd family yet, but it was clear that she had found her place as Sophie and Ziska’s partner in crime.
 
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I wonder if Marie Alexandria is still working on her Japanese language skills as Suga would love to speak her native language in the guise of teaching the daughter of her husband’s most feared advisor something useful, also having Marie speaking Japanese to her children is a way to be more connected to her heritage.
As for the problems of doing the necessary repairs to the Templehof neighborhood a special tax district should have been part of the original plans but maybe one could be created now and the revenue used for the exclusive use of the neighborhood with Kat in charge of the money and how it is spent.
 
“Sigi says that she has been taking birth control pills” Kiki said, “But if she were, how did she end up pregnant and having to get married to Jay Parker in such a hurry? I know that those pills are unlikely to just fail.”
Grapefruit or grapefruit juice will negate the pills effects. That is all it takes. From what both Kiki & Berg are saying, I don't think the medical community is aware of this yet. This means that it is entirely possible that Sigi never skipped a single dose of the pill, but had a grapefruit or glass of grapefruit juice for breakfast and next minute it's "Congratulations! You're pregnant!" It is also possible that Sigi got a bad batch of pills.
At the moment, there was a dispute about who in the neighborhood was responsible for maintaining the alley, so Marie was deftly skipping between water filled potholes that were large enough to swallow cars. The Local Council had pointed to the City, the City had pointed to the State, and the State had pointed back at the Local Council. Marie’s mother said that she was about to start shooting them and progress upward until they acted out of self-preservation. Marie had no idea if her mother was joking or not.
The age old issue of "Who is going to pay for this?" followed immediately by bureaucratic finger pointing. As for Kat's statement, I'm fairly sure said bureaucrats wouldn't be sure if Kat was joking or not either. I am also sure that they would err on the side of self-preservation and assume that she isn't, just in case. In which scenario, I can see the alley being repaired by the local council with funding from both the city and the state. If all 3 have a hand in the repairs, then none of them attract the ire of the Tigress, thus all get to keep their heads attached and their skins intact.
 
The age old issue of "Who is going to pay for this?" followed immediately by bureaucratic finger pointing.
With the added layer of no one at any level wanting to deal with Kat, who despite an impressive sounding title and fearsome reputation doesn't exactly have a whole lot of official power.
 
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