Kardia

Fifty year old Hope is a pathologist who has spent much of her career on the research of the heart. She was abandoned by her biological parents when she was a newborn in 1955, and was subsequently found outside in the woods in the snow. Suffering from what was probably a congenital heart defect but one exacerbated by the extreme conditions in which she was abandoned, she required what was in 1955 considered a risky experimental open heart surgery immediately following her discovery to survive. That surgery required a live donor, blood from that donor being pumped into her during the procedure, realistically meaning that both she and the donor would be living off of the donor's beating heart at the time. The donor ended up being the person who she has always considered her father, a photograph of the two of them immediately before the surgery which she keeps as a memento in her desk drawer. For various reasons including watching the romantic relationship of her two younger associates Sally and Sanjay slowly disintegrate despite their true feelings for each other, Hope becomes interested in the scientific connection between what was previously considered only the literary connection between the heart and the emotion of love. Because of the feeling of love she has for the man she considers her father and his role in her survival with his blood still coursing through her veins and thus having that physical connection to his heart, Hope feels a good starting point for her research is to delve more deeply into those aspects of her own open heart surgery back in 1955 of which she is unaware.