For fifty-seven seconds, gay attorney Henry Rios' heart stopped pumping. Recuperating from a heart attack, Rios learns with astonishment that his estranged sister had had an illegitimate daughter when she was young, and that the girl is grown now, with a son of her own and an abusive husband. When the man is shot dead, and the bruised wife confesses, Rios immediately assumes the battered wife acted in self-defense, but gradually small discrepancies emerge.