A “peasant” arrives with a nearly frozen soldier in a wheelbarrow, found barely alive beneath nine dead men in an abandoned ambulance. When touched, the soldier recoils in terror, his eyes wide. Margarete soothes him while they strip his clothes, discovering sheaves of skillfully drawn sketches stuffed in the lining for insulation. The drawings depict soldiers, landscapes, and a naked woman, but also disturbing surreal images: eyes in trees, serpentine dragons, and children with animal heads. Lucius diagnoses Nervenshock, a new war disease with no clear cause or cure.

The unresponsive soldier refuses food and must be fed through a nasogastric tube. After a week, he begins moaning at night, agitating other patients. Morphine and other sedatives fail. Desperate, Lucius tries some expired Veronal tablets, crushing them into the soldier’s mouth. Within an hour, the soldier calms and speaks for the first time, saying in Hungarian that he is thirsty. Margarete learns that his name is Sergeant József Horváth and that he is from Budapest. Disoriented, he believes that it is October and that he is waiting for his mother.

They begin dosing Horváth with Veronal twice daily. Over the following weeks, he slowly recovers, learning to eat, stand, and walk again. The other soldiers, who once cursed his moaning, rally around him. Horváth resumes drawing, sketching hospital scenes and portraits of Margarete. Lucius recognizes strange creatures in the drawings as Grottenolm, the blind salamanders he saw as a child in a Vienna museum. When Lucius says the word aloud, he sees recognition flicker in Horváth’s eyes and feels a shared connection.

When an evacuation detail arrives, Margarete believes Horváth is ready to leave and says he asked to go home. Lucius refuses, fearing that Horváth will be sent back to the front or to a larger hospital where he will be subjected to torturous treatments. Margarete questions whether he is keeping Horváth for the patient’s sake or their own. After the lorry departs, Lucius counts his remaining Veronal: only 16 tablets.

New soldiers with war neuroses arrive, but Lucius is reluctant to use his remaining Veronal on them, saving it for Horváth, who needs increasing doses. At the end of March, an officer named Lieutenant Horst arrives on a conscription detail under new, stricter standards of battle readiness. Lucius recognizes him from Margarete’s descriptions. As Horst inspects patients, Lucius attempts to protect them with fabricated medical diagnoses.

When they reach Horváth, Lucius diagnoses him with “dementia praecox, catatonic type.” Horst grows suspicious because Horváth has been hospitalized for a month. When ordered to stand, Horváth squeezes his eyes shut instead. Enraged, Horst kicks him in the stomach and stands on his neck with his steel-toed boot. Horváth’s drawings are discovered, which Horst takes as proof of “malingering.” When Horst claims ignorance of “dementia praecox,” Lucius insults his intelligence and lack of education.

On Horst’s orders, guards strip Horváth naked and tie him to the beech tree in the freezing courtyard. Horváth screams in German that he is cold, staring directly at Lucius throughout the ordeal. Horst prevents Margarete from closing the church door, forcing the other patients to watch. Lucius lunges at the guards but is easily restrained. Horváth’s body succumbs to the cold, his skin turning alabaster. When he is finally cut down, the frozen rope tears his skin, and his feet, frozen to the ground, are kicked free with a sickening crunch. Horst warns that on his next visit, all “malingerers” will be executed, and Lucius will be court-martialed.

After remaining in the freezing courtyard, numb with guilt, Lucius finds Margarete preventing him from approaching Horváth. She tells him that Horváth blames Lucius for keeping him there and bringing Horst. For a week, Margarete cares for Horváth alone, amputating both his frostbitten feet and later his left leg due to infection. Horváth completely regresses to his original catatonic state. Lucius feels like an intruder on the deep connection Margarete has with patients, a bond he lacks. After a week, Horváth is evacuated, his survival uncertain.

Spring arrives, but new soldiers with war neuroses follow. Haunted by Horváth, Lucius finds his treatments completely ineffective. Margarete grows withdrawn and anxious, constantly watching for Horst’s return. In late April, she warns that Horst’s details are hanging men for desertion elsewhere. Lucius resolves that when Horst returns, he will declare the neurosis cases fit for redeployment to save them from execution. Margarete accepts his decision but tells him that, for the first time, their oaths are different.

In May, the whistle announces Horst’s return. Margarete runs from the church, her hair shorn short, and puts on a frantic performance, feigning “madness” and screaming about a typhus outbreak to scare him away. Horst strikes her with his crop and kicks her twice, leaving severe facial injuries. Lucius rushes her to her room in the sacristy, where for the first time he sees its simple furnishings and a peaceful drawing by Horváth pinned to the wall. He treats her deep lacerations, suturing a bleeding artery.

In the early-morning hours, Margarete develops a high fever from infection. For a week, Lucius nurses her devotedly, consumed by guilt and fear. She becomes delirious, calling out for lost patients. Lucius experiences the full horror of disease, tormented by medical possibilities. On the seventh day, her fever breaks, and she begins to recover. Lucius continues sleeping on a pallet on her floor. That night, she comes to his pallet and kisses him. Margarete initiates intimacy, insisting she knows what she is doing, and they make love.