A woman is found wandering the corridors of Nobel Hospital in Stockholm, accompanied by a young boy. She appears to be looking for a man who was involved in a car accident earlier that day. Meanwhile, in one of the emergency rooms, Tekla Berg is fighting to save a patient who was seriously injured in the same incident.

The resulting chaos goes beyond anything anyone could have predicted, leaving hospital staff, police and everyone else involved equally shocked and perplexed. Hospital Director Monica Carlsson has stepped up her attempts to privatise her fiefdom with the launch of an exclusive patient hotel, a controversial liver transplant unit and the prestigious recruitment of star surgeon Klas Nyström. It soon becomes obvious that Klas has his own agenda and is working to undermine Tekla at every turn.

But Tekla is too distracted to meet this challenge head on: she has become obsessed with the mystery surrounding the woman and her young charge - for the boy's identity remains unknown and no trace of his past can be found.