Four women bending together after a traumatic experience

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 Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, an alcoholic leaves her apartment to loot—but when she's gravely injured by sharp debris, she has to rely on the kindness of others to reach safety in a dog-eat-dog world.

An alcoholic hospital janitor with a murky, dark family history meets a capricious woman with even worse substance abuse problems than him. As they get sober and build a relationship, a series of misfortunes at work drives him to confront his painful past and his understanding of death.

A mother's mistakes haunt her. When a man brutalizes her, she accepts his punches as punishment for her sins.

When the father of a college-aged girl, who works in a mail center and has taken to stealing her classmates' mail, comes to visit, he sexually assaults his daughter, as he has been doing since she was a young girl.

In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

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.

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

Faced with inexplicable suffering in a locked ward of a mental hospital, a young woman must choose whether to give up or live life on her own terms.