One day in early February Nancy Perkins, a nurse in a decaying marriage, receives an assignment to care for a Vietnam War veteran suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer's. Not only does the patient, Jeremiah Jacobson, believe himself to be in the midst of war but he also believes all of his nurses and visitors to be deceased family members and friends from his tormented past. On the same day Andrea Waters, an anti-social high school senior with a painful past, is ordered by her father to visit Jeremiah on weekdays. Although reluctant, Andrea agrees to spend her afternoons with a grandparent she was never particularly close to and barely knows anything about. In order to communicate more easily with Jeremiah, Andrea and Nancy pretend to be the deceased relatives and friends he imagines them to be. They never thought doing so would change his life or theirs.