Teresa is fleeing; from Sicily, a land that robbed her of her father, killed by the Mafia for having dared to speak out against a protection racket; from her body, in which she doesn’t feel comfortable; and from her job, temporary work which seems to deny her any credible future.

She finds solace in Rome. Her friend Giselle has offered her work looking after the terminally ill. Teresa accepts hesitantly. In these fatally ill men and women Teresa discovers a vigorous humanity, capable of surprising resilience and fortitude, and she comes into contact with precisely the vitality that she herself had lost. But as her life appears to be taking a turn for the better – she even finds a boyfriend who seems too good to be true – the past continues to gnaw away at her: her father’s last words, shouted at his killer… her anger at a country immobilised by its own silence… and gradually the urge for revenge, until now suppressed within her, becomes impossible to ignore. Initially these are only thoughts, but when she meets a new patient – Libero Ferrari, a coarse and burly ex-terrorist on a life sentence for murder – the thoughts take on a real sense of possibility, and she reaches the point of no return. She steals a gun and returns to Sicily, determined to avenge her father’s death.