#gstm

Luisa looked from Lisette to the ground, unable to speak. She hadn’t known. Every time she had mentioned meeting Lisette’s family, she never would’ve guessed that it would be in an unkempt graveyard at the edge of town. Putting her hand up to her mouth, Luisa slowly kneeled down, not minding the fact that her dress was now covered in powdery white. She carefully raised a hand and brushed away the fresh snowfall that had blanketed the stones to reveal three names.

Ingrid Dietrich, age 34.

Martin Dietrich, age 4.

Peter Dietrich, age 7 months.

A mother and her two sons were swaddled together in the poorest part of town, each of them younger than the next. “They died about two weeks after my eighth birthday. Peter and Martin went first,” Lisette started, her voice trembling. “My mother...stuck around for another three days. And then she was gone too.”

Luisa turned over her shoulder to look up at her lover. “How?” She asked breathily, her voice shaking and catching painfully in her chest.

Lisette took her hands from her pockets and breathed into them, frantically rubbing them together to keep herself warm. “Pneumonia. The doctor was able to diagnose it, but our medical resources at the time weren’t as strong as they are now,” she chuckled bitterly. Wolfberg had been little more than a mountain village before its military base was built years later. Government funding began to provide more and more for the townspeople, but it had been too late for Lisette’s mother and siblings. Pneumonia waited for no one. “My father wanted to send them to the Charité hospital in Berlin for treatment, but we didn’t have the money. When they died, we could barely afford their headstones, let alone bury them somewhere nicer.”

Luisa slowly stood up, her legs freezing from the cold. “And that’s why you decided to be a nurse. So that you could help save people.”