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Herbert sniffled as he looked at her lifeless body, the way her hair perfectly draped over her shoulders, the way her dress was perfectly pressed and, how could he forget, her swollen stomach that held his child.
He had to get the fetus out, he had to save the last remaining part of his Liebling, with a tearfully determined face he prepared himself to make the ingestion in the low abdominal area that held the child.
Carefully he slid the blade of his scalpel over the skin with practiced ease, he had to get the fetus out before his wife's body entered the first stages of decomposition.
He worked for an hour, making sure the embryonic sack was still around the child before rigging up the tubing with the machinery that would ensure the fetus's safety and survival while he extracted it from the womb before placing it into Geburt box.
The Geburt box was one of his earlier experiments, made to simulate a womb so that whatever animal he wanted could be birthed from the machine, but that was just it, he had only made it for animals, animals that were just seeds to be precise, even then most of the offspring would come out with defects of the organs or limbs, it wasn't made for a six month old human fetus that was already developed, but...he had to try and he was a man that would not give in so easily to death, not in the slightest .
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It had been three months, his wife now six feet deep where she had wanted to be put to rest, much to his dismay he had respected her wish, he wasn't going to risk bringing her back to life and seeing any sort of hate in her eyes, it would be to much to bare for his already fragile physique.
Instead he distracted himself with his work; he WAS a doctor and a man of science after all, he couldn't drop everything and sulk just because of personal tragedy, he needed distraction, in the form of work, so work he did.
It had been a particularly long night at the clinic, he had never been one for the paperwork side of his job as a doctor, but he didn't spend to much mental energy on the subject, he was in the comfort of his own home after all, why complain when most others didn't have the luxury of taking home paperwork like he did; he sighed, taking his off his round rimless glasses and gently placed them on his desk, rubbing the bridge of his nose as fatigue took hold; maybe a small brake wouldn't hurt; he was still sadly human after all and needed sleep.
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He woke up to his lab alarm ringing in the most irritating way possible; 'what could it be' he thought.... the Geburt box, the fetus!
He grabbed his glasses, slamming them onto his face and sprinted to the basement door, frantically unlocking the door before running down the stairs, seeing the box light up with a green hue as it opened up.
He paused for a moment, just silently stareing, to scared to approach the box.
A small writhing mass under the now deflated embryonic sack cried out for the first time and his heart melted as he quickly went over, grabbing a towel from a nearby work station, silently hopeing the baby would be healthy due to his past experience with the Geburt box; he put the towel over his shoulder and gently pulled the embryonic sack open....revealing..a perfectly healthy baby girl; quickly he cleaned his baby daughter off with the towel and put her to his chest, softly shushing her crys.
"Shh, shh, Papa ist hier."
Once he had checked that everything was in working order with his daughter, he had retired to the nursery his wife had so reverently put together; but he didn't want to dwell on her memory to much, he had to look forward to the future, for himself and his daughter; he was sat on the rocking chair holding the little one, she was so small in his arms, so innocent compared to him, it was hard to think that a man like him had made this with the woman he loved.
"Oh, look at you, Mein Kind, not even an hour old and already so fussy, what should we call you hmm?"
He gently bounced her in his arms as he got up and started thinking of names for his little one.
"Hmmm"
He slowly paced around the nursery with his baby daughter in his arms.
"Ah, I know one, Greta, that is a pretty name, don't you think?"
He smiled down at, Greta.
"A perfect name, for my perfect little, Greta"