Dr. Lydia Kowalenko loses her job at a pharmaceutical company after she refuses to cover up the shortcomings of certain captive preparations that have already cost lives. Through connections, she soon finds herself a new position. Shortly afterwards, however, her old boss gets her back under his wing again due to a company merger. This time around, she begins to conform. Her daughter Katia, also a doctor, is unscrupulously intent on pursuing her own career from the outset. Driven by her research ambitions, she carries out an unnecessary operative intervention in the clinic on a female patient who then dies from the operation's complications. Katia's son Thomas, who also wants to become a doctor, works as an assistant in the pathology department. He witnesses how the case is covered up and how litigation by the clinic director is quickly forestalled.