Dr. Eli Watt is a widower who came to a small town and believed that his meaningful career in New York was a failure. He raised his sons Jimmy and Letty, Letty's mother died in difficult childbirth, and the father blamed Watt and abandoned the child. Watt dreams of coming back to do research, but there are always things that hinder him: epidemics, the needs of his children, or the needs of his usually ungrateful patients. Only with the passage of time did he realize that his future was not yet over, and his past was not as failed as he thought.