A young woman drives recklessly down on a winding road, eventually fatally colliding with a truck. Weeks earlier across the country in Chicago, factory worker John Quincy Archibald and his wife Denise face financial trouble due to the ongoing recession. They rush their young son Michael to the hospital when he collapses at his baseball game, and are informed by cardiologist Dr. Raymond Turner and administrator Rebecca Payne that Michael needs a heart transplant to survive. The procedure is extremely expensive ($250,000) and the hospital requires a 30% down payment ($75,000) to place Michael on the organ recipient list, and John discovers that because of his job's recent changes to their insurance carrier and his working hours, his health insurance will not cover the surgery.