Heart transplants have been banned in Russia since 1993. Linar, a 5-year-old Russian boy, has to live attached to a huge machine on wheels that pumps his blood. While waiting for the chance of a transplant abroad, Linar lives alone in the children’s wing of the Bakoulev Centre for Cardiovascular Surgery in Moscow, with only occasional visits from his mother. The Russian Ministry of Health manages to raise the money for the operation in Italy, where Linar travels with the young surgeon Marcel. There he will have to wait for a new heart that is needed more urgently by the day.