Sasha Vesna comes out of an epileptic seizure in a pleasant, tingling postictal haze and tries to orient herself using her practiced “postictal focus,” forcing her mind to recall the most recent memory. She can remember making tea and feeding her cats, but the hours afterward are blank, reminding her of the blackout periods that accompany her condition.

As her mind continues “rebooting,” Sasha’s thoughts slide into painful history: as a child in Russia, her seizures made her a target of cruelty, and doctors labeled her incurable and mentally ill. Her parents abandoned her in a remote government mental institution, where she endured heavy sedation, restraint, and isolation.

Sasha recalls a turning point when a sadistic night attendant named Malvina withheld Sasha’s medication, watched her seizures, and abused her. Malvina is later found dead with her neck twisted backward, and although Sasha insists she did not do it, the staff punish Sasha with solitary confinement and hide the incident to protect their funding.

After two weeks, Sasha is brought to meet a first-ever visitor: Dr. Brigita Gessner. Gessner recognizes Sasha’s condition as temporal lobe epilepsy, promises it is treatable, and offers free care in Prague, explaining a responsive neurostimulation chip activated by a magnetic wand to interrupt seizures. Sasha is released, undergoes the procedure, and experiences the chip working immediately when Gessner stops an oncoming seizure.

In the years that follow, Gessner employs Sasha at her lab, gives her a place to live, and continues monitoring Sasha’s brain to address ongoing memory impairment with supplements and VR-based training. The memory ends as Sasha is pulled back to the present by a man’s voice; the post-seizure calm collapses into grief when Sasha fully remembers that Brigita Gessner is dead. Sasha opens her eyes to see a kind, handsome man cradling her head, and he softly tells her, “Welcome back.”