Christmas 1999. Chris, now 17, faces the traumatic reality of his father's cancer diagnosis. After Joel undergoes brain surgery, weekly visits to the hospital test Chris's mental and emotional stamina. In between, there are fleeting moments of normalcy with new friends and the energy of high school life. But the hospital looms with its sterile smells, its quiet heartbreak, and a father who emerges from surgery irrevocably changed. Even in Chris's dreams, death lingers—not as absence, but as an unsettling, altered return.