Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet system: In a hospital young people awaiting heart operations and possible death live just for today with mischief-making and even love affairs under the stringent gaze of the old matron Baba Nastya. Here one of the patients a young Turkmen meets a Greek Comsomol boy a Russian Stalinist with a ‘robotic’ heart and the lovely but tragic Mary. To whom does the future belong – to the soulless robots or the poetical souls?