Lucius immerses himself in the hospital routine, rarely leaving. Professor Zimmer, elderly and with failing eyesight, cedes clinical responsibility to Lucius but provides brilliant diagnoses when consulted. Zimmer asks about cases of war nerves, but Lucius cannot bring himself to discuss Horváth. In April 1917, a newly admitted, shell-injured Austrian resembles Horváth, triggering Lucius’s panic. He becomes overly involved in the patient’s care until the nurses intervene; the patient is discharged unchanged.

Lucius begins spending more time at his parents’ home, joining them for black-market meals. When police question him about hospital desserts, he lies and realizes they want a payoff. His relationship with his father improves as they discuss the cavalry, and he joins his father at the large war map, tracking the front near Lemnowice and resolving to return when possible. By August, the Russian army has retreated, but his transfer request is denied due to physician shortages. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the hospital floods with returning prisoners of war. Conditions worsen as Zimmer develops pneumonia.

In April 1918, Lucius’s mother summons him to dinner. She tells him he must marry, arguing that with the old aristocracy collapsing, the future lies in marrying into industrial wealth. When he resists, she reveals that she knows about Margarete and speculates that she would have contacted him by now if she wanted to. She offers to arrange introductions to eligible heiresses. Back at the hospital, Lucius accepts her logic, concluding that his search has hit a dead end.

In late April, while walking in Maria-Josefa Park, Lucius sees a woman who strongly resembles Margarete. He chases her through the rain-soaked streets to the South Station, following her down an alley until he realizes that she is not Margarete. Embarrassed, he apologizes and leaves.

Lucius agrees to his mother’s matchmaking scheme and endures four disastrous meetings with wealthy young women desperate to marry into the aristocracy. The fifth candidate is Natasza Borszowska, daughter of Polish General Borszowski. Intimidated by her beauty, Lucius struggles with conversation, but she is poised and engages him about his interests. He retrieves the X-ray of a faked mermaid to show her. They marry in early August 1918.

On their wedding night, Lucius is haunted by thoughts of Margarete. Natasza, who is more sexually experienced, uses contraception, as she does not want a baby yet. Lucius decides to postpone telling her about his nightmares, instead staying awake all night. They move into an apartment on Hohlweggasse. He continues avoiding sleep by pretending to work on hospital papers at night. After a week, their conversations cease, and Natasza grows frustrated with his silence. She leaves for a holiday in the Salzkammergut, and Lucius returns to sleeping on the wards. Upon her return, she brings her sister and brother-in-law Franz, a German veteran. Lucius feels alienated around the sophisticated trio and makes a rude remark to Franz.

Later, Natasza confronts him, mocking his social awkwardness by comparing him to his stuttering patients, which causes his own stutter to return. When she announces a trip to Trieste, Lucius insists on joining her. She refuses, listing his flaws. When he asks if she is meeting another man, she confirms it and reveals she had other men in the Salzkammergut and Berlin. She calls him a “potwór”—a sorry, accidental creation—and says he only married to placate his mother. The marriage ends. Lucius returns to his parents’ home in late September.

A severe influenza outbreak strikes the hospital. By November, Lucius has lost 27 patients and three nurses and becomes gravely ill himself. After recovering, he learns from an orderly that the Armistice has been declared. He goes home, where his father sweeps the military pieces from the war map, signifying the end of the war and the Empire.

The Armistice means Lucius can finally return to Lemnowice to search for Margarete. However, his journey is blocked by political instability, new borders, ongoing conflicts between Poland and Ukraine, and his duty to patients under the declining Professor Zimmer. In May 1919, he receives a letter informing him that the hospital is closing and that his wartime medical degree has been voided. He tells Zimmer he is going to find a friend.

Learning that civilian travel south of Lwów is forbidden by the Polish military, Lucius visits his estranged wife, Natasza, and asks for a letter from her father, a Polish general, to grant him military passage. When she refuses, he blackmails her by threatening to expose her father’s wartime misuse of military resources to his mother. A week later, he receives the letter. He packs his old army rucksack, a map, a compass, and his father’s revolver, leaves a note for his parents, and boards a train heading east.

At the new Czechoslovak border, police board but do not search his bags. He spends a difficult night in the grim industrial town of Bohumín. On the next leg, he meets Adelajda, a young Polish woman searching for her missing husband, Tomasz. She shows him photos, but Lucius does not recognize him. He examines her feverish son, Paweł, and warns Adelajda against the patent medicine she uses to sedate him. Lucius tells her he is also searching for someone, creating a bond between them.

The train is stopped in a field by a Polish militia. Adelajda tells Lucius to pretend to be her husband to protect him from detention. A young militiaman questions their inconsistent documents and orders Adelajda to come with him. Suddenly, a shot rings out. Militiamen rush into the fields, fire at a fleeing man, and drag detainees forward before ordering passengers to lower the window shades. The train continues. At Jarosław, Adelajda disembarks but returns to give Lucius her address in Rybnik in case his search is unsuccessful. Lucius reaches Lwów, uses his letter to board a military train to Dolina, and begins his journey to Lemnowice on foot.

Lucius spends the night in an abandoned railway station. He dreams that he is searching a train for Margarete and wakes to a small animal nosing his rucksack. He walks for two days through the war-scarred Carpathian foothills, passing ruined villages and scattered human remains. As he finally sees Lemnowice in the distance, three armed men capture him. They gag him with a stone, tie him up, and lead him into the village. Their leader arrives, and Lucius recognizes him as Krajniak, the former cook from the Lemnowice field hospital. Krajniak frees Lucius, introduces him to his new wife and baby, and invites him to stay the night.

Krajniak explains that after Lucius disappeared, Margarete searched desperately for him. The hospital was evacuated to Nadworna during the Russian advance, and Margarete accompanied the sickest patients to Sambor. Krajniak reveals that Zmudowski, a former patient, stole Margarete’s embroidered handkerchief bearing the names Małgorzata and Michał, speculating that she may have lost a man before Lemnowice and might not have come from a convent at all. That night, Lucius confesses his guilt and recurring nightmares about József Horváth. Krajniak responds by describing his own phantom limb pain but offers no redemptive wisdom.

At dawn, Lucius visits the abandoned church. It is empty and smaller than he remembers. On the windowsill of the sacristy where Margarete slept, he finds two small, round, white stones, which he takes. He finds the beech tree unscarred and indifferent. Krajniak escorts Lucius to the edge of the valley, and they part ways. Lucius travels to Sambor, where at the district hospital he finds a 1917 staff photograph that includes Margarete in a lay nurse’s uniform. A nurse identifies her as Małgorzata Małysz and says she was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital in Tarnów in March 1917.

Lucius travels to Tarnów. A hospital clerk confirms Małgorzata Małysz is on the day shift and about to leave work. He waits outside. Margarete sees him first, calling him by name. She has changed: her face is fuller, and she is dressed in a modern nurse’s uniform with styled hair. He tells her how he found her, but she stops him before he can embrace her. She confirms that she never took vows and reveals that she has a six-month-old daughter and is married. Her husband is someone Lucius knows: József Horváth. She found him among the amputees in the Sambor hospital and continued nursing him through multiple transfers. She helped reconnect him with his family and eventually married him. He now illustrates children’s books and cares for their baby while she works. She tells him that she dreamed he was alive and sent letters to him via the army that never reached him, and the hospital’s needs kept her from traveling to Vienna.

Hearing this story of redemption and new life brings Lucius a profound sense of release from his guilt. He asks to meet their daughter, but Margarete tearfully says he cannot, for József’s sake. As they both cry, she tells him how wonderful it is that Horváth can laugh now. Lucius thanks her. She gives him a final look, then turns and walks away, heading home. Lucius watches her go, finally free to move on.