Another thing-I’d never dreamed of getting married, didn’t know the first thing about being a wife, or if that was anything I should ever do. And, by the way, Karl was almost old enough to be my father.
I flashed on my heady feelings for Colin and even Zach, which were tumultuous, a little wild, a little dangerous. Karl didn’t ride a scooter at sixty miles an hour in crazy traffic. He didn’t risk his life in a medical battlefield. He wrote plays. He drove an old Daimler.
But-I liked that. Karl made me feel safe and cared about. I had come to treasure his friendship. I liked his complexity and his kindness. I liked him as a human being. As a man.
Were those reasons to marry him? He had said, No rush.
“Say something, Brigid, will you? I feel a little lost right now,” Karl said.
“I’m sorry. I forgot something.”
I stumbled across his knees as he stood up to let me out to the aisle. “Stay,” I told him. “I have to go. I’ll call you.”
I marched up the dark aisle and out the lobby door, onto the Südwestkorso. I was running again. I knew that running was old stuff, but my feet took me through and around clumps of pedestrians and all the way around the block.
What’s with you? I asked the air. What’s your problem, Brigid? And I wondered. If not now, when? If not Karl, who?
Was that a reason to get married?
I stood again in front of the theater and looked up at the sign reading DAS THEATER IST GESCHLOSSEN. “The theater is closed.”
I, too, was closed. The last time I had loved a man, he had died.
I knocked on the lobby door, and a young woman let me inside. I entered the dark lobby and went down the carpeted aisle, at last slipping into the seat next to Karl, in the front row. He whispered, “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said to Karl. “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, I would love to be your wife.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Karl kissed me again. I took his face in my hands and kissed him back. The lights came on. The assemblage applauded the performance, and they turned to give Karl an enthusiastic hand. It was a standing ovation.
We both started to laugh. It was as if everyone had known except for me. I was going to marry Karl Lenz. He was going to be my husband.
Chapter 54
AT SEVEN A.M., I was sitting in a pew in Herz Jesu Kirche, the Church of the Sacred Heart, only two blocks from where I lived with my husband, Karl.
I still found it hard to believe that I had gotten married in a Lutheran church, wearing a long, white, and completely perfect wedding dress, surrounded by Karl’s family and good and shared friends from BZFO and Der Zug.
I’m pretty sure God had been there, too.
These past months were so unlike my previous life, it was almost comical. Who are you now, Brigid? Is this you?
As soon as we were settled into “our” three-room, top-floor apartment in the arty neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, Karl showed me Berlin. We walked miles, saw monuments and parks and stunning architecture. We went to the theater, of course, and I bought a new wardrobe because we were invited to so many dinner parties and benefits.
I’m a plain-looking woman, but when Karl looked at me, I felt like a cover girl. When we weren’t having nights out in the city, we nestled down in the study, where both of us did our writing.
I would read lines for Karl’s new play in progress, and sometimes my reading was so hilarious that Karl would say, “Terrible, Brigid. Terrible. Now I have to write that again. It will never sound good to me after that reading.”
I laughed so hard, and so did he.
While Karl struggled with his play, I wrote in my journal of human tragedy, one person at a time. When I put my writing into his hands, he read each word, never skimming, never patronizing. Once he said to me, “I tell you this, Brigid. Your writing is unflinching truth. You’re a better writer than I am.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Trust me.”
Having never lived with a man before, I had to learn my way around Karl. He could get cranky when he was writing, either in his head or on his laptop. If I clashed pots in the kitchen or asked questions while he was “in the zone,” our happy flow could get interrupted. I was slow to apologize, but Karl was apologizer in chief and the best at hugging it out.
Sometimes, in bed late at night, I would awake with a start, thinking that I was back at Kind Hands, that Jemilla and Aziza had crawled into bed with me and that Sabeena was waking me up because someone was dying in the O.R.
But, no, thank God.
I was lying with my arms around the big, snoring man I trusted and loved with my whole heart.
Now, inside this lovely neighborhood church with the stained glass behind the altar throwing brilliant light on the stone floor, I had some things to say to God.
I thanked Him for the baby I was carrying inside me and for the happiness that filled me up from the bottom of my soles to the ends of my incorrigible red hair, and every part of me in between.
Pretty good joke on me, Lord. This is what I get for doubting You. I get everything good in the world. I am pretty sure You knew all of this, but I am more surprised than even You can imagine. How is it that I sit here, when six years ago I was full of bullet holes, stuck in a subterranean depression, barely alive at all?
I sometimes can’t be sure if this life is real. Is this a peek at my future? Am I dreaming? Or, dear God, is this my actual life? Am I allowed to have all of this?
I waited for an answer, and I heard nothing.
But I didn’t need the voice of God to tell me what was self-evident. The pews were solid cherry. The altarpiece was bejeweled gold supported by columns of marble. And a stained-glass Jesus Christ spread his arms wide open to me.
I am thankful, Lord. I will be the best wife, doctor, mother, friend, that I can possibly be. With Your help.
Amen.
I felt woozy when I got to my feet. I steadied myself with a hand on the back of the pew, thinking for a moment how nice it would be to go back to bed. If only. I flashed on my full day at BZFO, which would unfurl from the moment I stepped through the doorway.
I had just promised God that I would be the best possible doctor, despite the risks to myself and the little one curled up inside me.
I whispered out loud, “God, please watch over us.”
I crossed myself. And then I went to work.
Chapter 55
I HAD brought hundreds of babies into the world, during floods and droughts and in the black of night, holding a flashlight between my jaws.
However, because I might not be able to deliver my own child so easily, I was under the care of a superb ob-gyn at Charité, a world-class hospital.
Karl had purchased an apartment next to ours and opened a doorway between the two units, and, using our combined talents, we made the sweetest of nests for the baby we were expecting.
I continued to work the easy shift at BZFO, wearing loose clothing and shoes with good rubber soles.
Karl cooked delicious dinners and doted on me. We spent long evenings in his study writing in matching lounge chairs under the windows. This was really the best of times. I began to read more, and my writing improved in the sanctuary of a writers’ room for two as I turned sketches written in the trenches of Magwi Clinic into tight prose.
I wasn’t prepared for my water to break while I was on duty at BZFO, but, of course, that was how it happened. I said, “I can handle this.”
But I was suddenly afraid to cross this threshold.
Would my baby be all right? Would he or she be healthy and strong? What was I supposed to do now?
Dr. Maillet had Karl on speed dial.