Characters
Frau Yildiz
Director of nursing at Haus Deichblick in Wilhelmsburg
For twenty-two years, Frau Yildiz has been director of nursing at Haus Deichblick in Wilhelmsburg, a low yellow building with eighty-six beds behind the Elbe dike. She is short and broad, with gray curls, and wears orthopedic shoes you hear in the hallway before you see her. Once a quarter she sits down with Anna Kessler, who has to explain to her why things aren’t coming. Frau Yildiz notices everything, doesn’t interrupt, and closes the door before she listens. What she needs for her twenty-six residents who can’t get out of bed on their own, she says straight out: a destination that exists, and a fourth vehicle.
First encounter
- First noticed: the orthopedic shoes in the hallway
- Speaks: briefly, without reproach; “I noticed.”
- Object: the home’s emergency plan, “as of March”
Connected to
- Anna KesslerLower Elbe emergency manager who has known Lena thirteen years
- Frau PetersenNinety-four, lived through the 1962 flood
- The Lower Elbe and the DikeThe land behind the dikes between Hamburg and the estuary
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.