Dr. Nancy St. John has a well-kept, twenty-year-old secret. A pregnant high school senior, she is banished by her parents to live with her spinster aunt in Chicago. Heartbroken, Nancy concentrates on her work and avoids intimate relationships. Hope, the daughter Nancy gave up for adoption twenty years earlier, finds her. A bond blossoms between them but is challenged by Hope's leukemia. Hope needs a bone marrow transplant, but she has a rare blood type. Nancy is not a match. Nancy is determined to find Skip, Hope's biological father, who never knew about Nancy's pregnancy or why she disappeared so mysteriously.