Sixteen-year-old Xtra Keys hopes to raise his son better than his boozy, razor-edged mother raised him, and he just might get his wish when he's thrust into an unorthodox alternative school full of underprivileged boys.

When the young woman Emma Carillo is stabbed five times, paramedic Marcus Galan feels a great empathy for her and unsuccessfully tries to save her life in the Mercy Hospital. Meanwhile the near death patient Caroline Kuntz awakens...