Dorota’s statement about running over the doctor rings into this new scene. Even though The Dekalog is a deeply moral project, the people within it are almost never evil or aggressive. With the exception of Episode 5, and even then the morality is far from black and white, everyone in the Dekalog seems to be making a genuine effort to be a good person most of the time. This is true in Kieslowski’s films in general, actually, and it has the strange effect of raising the moral stakes. If you take out the obvious good and bad guys from stories, the small virtues and selfish acts are amplified and take on much greater weight, especially in a film.

We next see the doctor in his apartment reading a newspaper and circling various items in what appears to be a classified section. We get no definitive answer about what he was circling, but we later discover from Barbara, his cleaning lady, that he answered an ad and received a response, but we hear no more.

Next, the doorbell rings and the doctor asks Barbara to come in. The doctor seems to have formed a warm relationship with her. He makes her tea and then shows her how some plants are doing.

We go back to Dorota, who is in her apartment listening to her phone answering machine. At first she hears from a woman named Anka who is about to travel to Lodz "with the school." There is a character named Anka in episode 4 who is an acting student, perhaps this is a subtle tie to that character and story. Lodz is where Poland's national film school is located, so it would be fair to assume that Anka is doing something there related to film.

As Dorota listens to the message, the camera pans on some photos of mountain scenes, a foreshadow of an upcoming scene that features her husband’s climbing teammate. Next, we hear a call from someone rather urgently trying to get in touch with Janek, perhaps with some personal information to share. (In fact, it is the same climbing partner we’ll see soon enough.)

Then we see a letter that Dorota picks up, reads, then rolls into a ball. We will find out soon about another man in her life and a difficult decision he has put to her, it is likely that the letter outlines her choice.

Returing to the the doctor, we seen Barbara do some light dusting, then sit down at a table with the doctor for tea. He begins a story that involves his daughter, wife and father. As his daughter is teething with her first tooth, her father is making grunting sounds in the bathroom. He comes out holding a tooth that he just extracted. The doctor notes the symmetry of one tooth coming in, the other going out. The doctor's wife, who hasn't sleep in two days because of the daughter's crying from teething pain, says that she might have to leave the house, because there are too many teeth. The doctor tries to calm things, asking her to try to sleep because his father won't be going anywhere. The father then calms his granddaughter by playing a game with his tooth with her and she tries to put it in her mouth.

The story doesn't reach a conclusion, and this appears to be the doctor’s method. He is stretching out his story as another way of controlling time, so we will hear more family stories with the doctor and Barbara ahead.

As he's leaving the apartment, the doctor again sees Dorota staring out a window, smoking. He says that a rabbit was dropped out a window the day before and asked if it was hers. She says no. He then says, very kindly, that if she's so anxious about the state of her husband, stop by the hospital that afternoon.

Dorota goes back into her apartment, puts on a record — perhaps a recording by the man overseas who has left her with the difficult choice — then she stares out the window and sees the doctor walking away. She returns to her desk, pulls out the crumpled paper and takes a clean sheet of paper and a pen, presumably to write a new draft. But she doesn't start and hesitates. The doorbell then rings. A man says he is there to drop off her husband's sick pay but needs to see her ID. She says she only has a passport and he says it's fine.

It’s important to point out here that in Poland under communist rule, you would have to apply to the government to receive your passport every time you traveled, then return it to the government upon completion of the trip. So, Dorota having a passport is meaningful, it means that she has planned international travel and received clearance for it.

She then takes the cash from the clerk and asks him for the time. It is 10 a.m., so she still has some time before she can get to the hospital and receive her update.