Seattle, 1961. Charlotte Bellamy, a 25-year-old, childless teacher, discovers that she has fatal chronic kidney failure.
At the same time, kidney specialists in Seattle are preparing to open the world’s first dialysis center to treat her disease. Their problem is they only have funding to treat five patients, though hundreds in Seattle need it.
So, they create a committee of lay people to choose who will be the lucky five to survive, the rest being sent home to die. Since nothing like this had been done before, the committee must make up the rules as they go along, triggering angry confrontations about what makes a life worth saving.
Charlotte’s doctor excitedly reaches out to her to share the news of the new treatment. Now, she just has to overcome the odds facing the committee. After first being turned down, letters from her second-grade students convince the committee she should be one of the lucky five.
When she begins her chronic dialysis, she learns that the other patients are parents with multiple children. Charlotte realizes that when she was selected for dialysis, it meant a parent was being sent home to die. Having suffered the loss of her father as a child, she feels she can’t inflict that pain on other children. So, she decides to discontinue her dialysis, dooming herself to a painful death, so that a parent can take her place.
Based on a true story.
