When seven-year-old Angela Harris is rushed to a hospital emergency room in an unexplained coma, Dr. Ben Allen, the young pediatrician assigned to her case, welcomes the diagnostic challenge.

His enthusiasm turns to frustration when confronted with the child's overbearing father, her phlegmatic mother, her doting but senile great-aunt, a knife-happy surgeon, and a hospital administrator who values fund-raising above patient care. Consumed by his efforts to save Angela before she falls victim to her mysterious illness, Allen must do so in the face of a series of events that threaten to end his budding career.