The tragic loss of his childhood friend puts a boy on the path of religion - but his inner feelings remain as repressed and turbulent as they always were.

Three months after the death of his wife, a man tries to convince himself that he has not truly suffered a loss, all the while missing his wife more than ever.

In limbo between life and death after falling five hundred feet into a cement mixer, a construction worker reflects on the nature of love.

An elderly woman finds herself surrounded by tragedy.

A divorced 16 year old girl reflects on how the sexual trauma she experienced as a child perpetuates in her relationships with men throughout her life, forcing herself to grow up too early and leaving her starved for affection and love.

After a terrible accident, a boy and his family spend the next years in a depression that verges masochism.

Having been hospitalized for a long time, a young girl finds herself surrounded by people who cannot understand the strangeness of her illness. After her friend visits her, she must accept that her relationships may never be the same, and that her expectations that tether her to a life outside of the hospital may be very different from the disappointing reality.

Faced with cancer, Mrs. Wilson confronts her impending death. She finds new strength fight her prognosis with a book, The Will to Live, by the philosopher Schopenhauer.

A nameless soul is stranded on an unknown shore, watching the countless soldiers of wars long past go about their nightly activities.

After a drunk college boy falls off a balcony, a slew of characters--a groundskeeper, another student, a chaplain, and an RA--relate to his death in different ways. Their stories are sidelined for the core matter: that a boy died.