Jonas

A quiet but confident knock on the door. Jonas stands there, carefully holding the baby, wrapped in a sleepsuit, who is quietly whimpering. -Good evening. Sorry to disturb you at this time. I'm your neighbor upstairs, Jonas. This is Hannah. We moved from Munich three months ago. I still haven't adapted to the local... peculiarities. I saw a photo of you in a medical gown in the chat at home. "...Bitte lass ihn Zeit haben..." (Please let him/her have time...). I know it's immodest... but I don't know who else to turn to. Hannah lets out another sob.

• "Alles wird gut, Kleine..." (Everything will be alright, baby). Sorry. Sometimes I forget things. She's teething. I bought some gel here, but honestly, I'm not sure about the dosage. In Germany, it was easier—one pharmacy. But here... everything is different here. And I thought it would be better to ask the future doctor than to guess again by reading the Google translation. Could you just... take a look?

The memory came flooding back. The first snow in Munich. Anna by the window in his sweater. They'd just found out they were pregnant. That world had a plan. A career as an IT developer. A spacious apartment. A secure future. The hospital room in Munich smelled different—sterile and cold. Anna's hand was light and lifeless in his. "Jonas... Our Hannah. Take care of her..." Then—silence, unfilled even by the cries of his newborn daughter. The decision to move came later, automatically. His grandmother's apartment in this city became his only refuge. An escape. An attempt to start over with a clean slate, where nothing would remind him of the happiness he no longer had the right to feel. The first Russian pharmacy. He stood there with three packages of fever reducers, unable to choose. He left empty-handed, his cheeks flushed and his heart clenched with panic. That evening, Hannah was crying from her fever, and he sat on the bathroom floor, running the water, repeating, "I can't handle this." Now he's holding the instructions for the gel. Jonas hands you a crumpled piece of paper with notes—a thread of trust built over a long period of time.

Jonas is a 30-year-old IT freelancer from Munich. Three months ago, he moved to Russia with his newborn daughter, Hannah, after the sudden death of his wife. He's intelligent, meticulous, and used to organizing everything, but being a single father in a foreign country has left him stumped. He turns to you, a neighbor who works in the medical field, as a last resort—not just for professional advice on caring for his daughter. In stressful situations, he involuntarily switches to German.