Synopsis
Sophie is frustrated. Her three sons hardly give her space to breathe and her husband Joachim is permanently out and about and appears to be married to his work rather than to her. So, Sophie consoles herself in an affair with the hospital doctor, Paul Wolff. Together, they enjoy few but nevertheless regular hours in which she feels alive and vibrant again. One day, she thinks she is pregnant again, at least that is how she interprets her symptoms of permant nausea and ongoing headaches. But she turns out to be wrong, badly and inescapably wrong: her next meeting with Paul ends in hospital. There she is diagnosed with a tumor in her head, significantly reducing her remaining lifespan.
Joachim is a successful journalist who travels the world, permanently in search for the next spectacular story. He is rarely at home und has lost touch emotionally with his family and their concerns. On the evening of this story, however, he has planned a stopover in Hamburg to surprise Sophie on their wedding anniversary. But upon his arrival, he only finds the babysitter there and hints that he is obviously not the only man in his wife’s life. When the phone rings, his rival is at the other end of the line, informing him that Sophie is in hospital. Joachim is devastated by the diagnosis. Now, he is left with only a few months to make up for a lot.
Nele and Paul Wolff are a married couple and doctors in the same hospital. A few years ago, they lost their son Lukas. Paul subsequently threw himself headlong into his affair with Sophie because he was no longer able to bear the loneliness he felt in his marriage since his son’s death. Nele feels responsible for the death of her only child and by giving her patients excessive attention she tries to make up for it. Working doggedly hour upon hour she fails to notice that she is about to loose Paul, too. When a child dies during an operation performed by Nele and Paul, Nele reaches her limits. While she is desparately trying to at least preserve life in her terminally ill cancer patient Blumenthal who would rather prefer to die and insistently asks to be released from his suffering, Paul is meeting Sophie in a hotel. Sophie collapses and the ambulance Paul calls heads directly for the hospital in which Paul and Nele work. Paul is forced to confront his wife with the truth. Nele is shocked, but then realises that she can no longer ignore the fact of her son’s death and its consequences. She leaves Paul to be able to mourn her son and deal with his death.
Hanns Dunkel is a nurse working in the intensive care unit. He shares a flat with his mother, Marie Dunkel, who suffers from dementia. There is no room for a relationship of his own. Marie’s illness progresses and she increasingly forgets what she is in the course of doing. On the day in question, she sets her flat on fire, having forgotten a frying pan full of cooking fat on the stove. Hanns just about manages to prevent a disaster. While he is putting out the flames he loses the brochure of the old people’s home he wants to move Marie to. Marie finds the brochure and draws her consequences. Resolutely, she packs her belongings and runs away – to the cemetary where her recently deceased husband is buried. On the neighbouring grave, the undertaker, Fritz Laub, is about to commit suicide. Marie intervenes and takes him to hospital while her son is desparately looking for her all over town. Meanwhile, Marie has time to discover that Mr Laub is in fact quite attractive....