Carroll Monks is the physician on duty when a beautiful young woman, naked and in a coma, arrives at Mercy Hospital's emergency room. Against the advice of his peers, Monks makes a radical and counterintuitive attempt to save her life -- a brilliant maneuver that nearly succeeds.

As Monks does his post-mortem, trying to make sense of the various contraindicating symptoms, the girl's grieving parents want his head -- and medical license. For Monks, wracked with guilt, there are several details that simply don't fit, and he becomes obsessed with trying to figure out how a healthy young woman died in his care -- and whether a world-famous plastic surgeon may ultimately be to blame.