When the brilliant Dr. Otto Powell takes over a surgery before his junior colleague, Dr. Richard Truscott, botches it, Truscott’s long-simmering resentment is compounded. But the encounter is lost on the powerful surgeon who whisks his striking new nurse Angela off to assist him, against her principles, on a highly illegal procedure: abortion. Incurring her wrath for making her complicit, Otto – trapped in a loveless marriage, bound to his glamorous wife Elizabeth by a dangerous secret – is ablaze with attraction for the young nurse who is determined to resist temptation.

Richard’s marriage to Angela’s sister Jean begins with a wedding day deception; Powell’s oldest friend and possessor of his dark secret, anesthesiologist Charlie Enderbury, desperately depends on Otto’s help; and a chance sighting of Otto by a menacing figure sets in motion the dredging up of an event from the past that will threaten Otto ‘s very existence.