Susan Lansing (Sissy Spacek) is a veteran nurse and single mother who supervises an urban hospital's neonatal ICU. Increasingly estranged from her teenage son, David, she's drawn to one of her patients -- a 2-month-old, HIV-positive baby girl who was abandoned at a clinic. When the hospital is unable to find the child a foster home, she decides to take the baby in. Two years later, the girl's ex-addict mother (Mary-Louise Parker) resurfaces, preventing Susan from adopting the child.