Abby DiMatteo, immersed in her second year as a surgical resident at Boston's Bayside Hospital, is elated when the hospital's elite cardiac transplant team taps her as a potential recruit. But soon she must make a critical decision that jeopardizes her entire career.

A car crash victim's healthy heart is ready to be harvested and is conveniently cross-matched to a wealthy patient, forty-six-year-old Nina Voss. Abby and chief resident Vivian Chao hatch a bold plan to make sure that the transplant goes instead to dying seventeen-year old boy. Then, after a new heart for Nina appears, Abby makes a terrible discovery -- Nina's heart has not come through the proper channels.