Michael Schäffer is among the Westerners whose families are killed in the great tsunami while on holiday at Thailand's Phuket beach. So is Billi Cramer, who is less introvert and hence accepts a Greek international relief force therapist's advice to seek contact with a compatriot in the same position. They got on so well there may be a real relationship in the making, but the grief still weighs heavily.

Ella and Marcus Herlinger desperately want to have a child. But Ella is a carrier of the incurable hereditary disease Duchenne, which her twelve-year-old nephew Lennart already has. Without the knowledge of her older sister Johanna, Ella tries to get pregnant with the help of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. However, to cover the high costs, Ella needs Johanna's consent to take out a mortgage on the jointly inherited parental farm. Johanna finally agrees to the mortgage without knowing the real reason for her sister's money worries. But the marriage between Ella and Marcus is put to the test by the medical treatment.