With her husband Eric at a medical congress in Chicago and their fourteen year old daughter at riding camp for the summer, psychiatrist Dr. Jenny Isaksson has emptied out their old house while their new house is being built, and has moved in with her grandparents in the house in which she grew up, she having temporarily assumed the role of senior physician at a psychiatric hospital filling in for a vacationing colleague. She is having a casual, meaningless affair with a man named Martin, while she believes that Tomas Jacobi, who she meets at a party, also is making sexual advances toward her. Regardless of if her assumption about Tomas is correct, the two become friends and frequent companions. In watching her grandmother lovingly take care of her ailing grandfather, remembering back to her childhood with her grandparents, spending time with Tomas, and processing an event associated with one of her more severe cases, that of a young woman named Maria, Jenny, in a fragile mental state, begins to have a nervous breakdown. In a semi-lucid state while conscious, and in semi-consciousness regarding reality when she dreams in her sleep, Jenny may begin to process her fragile mental state, especially if it is better to be alive or dead.