In 1940s/50s Cuba, Pilar Reyes answers the phone to realize that her husband, Senator Benito Reyes, has shot himself in the stomach at the end of his weekly radio broadcast. Benito is still alive but in critical condition. When Pilar first considers why Benito might have attempted suicide, she recalls that he’d wanted to have sons, but Pilar was barren. Since Pilar’s infertility diagnosis, the two hadn’t had sex—Benito felt the act was fruitless. At the hospital, Pilar meets with Benito’s two closest advisors, Ramon and Yano. The prime minister is also there, but the president will only come if Benito dies. Ramon tells Pilar that Benito might recover, albeit very slowly; Yano adds that they presume Benito tried to commit suicide because he had bribed an aide to secure an aqueduct for the Cuban citizens—hypocritical, given that Benito had been consistently outspoken about corruption. Ramon asks Pilar what his home life was like, which she takes as an accusation, and she replies that the radical speeches Ramon writes for Benito may have tipped him over the edge. Pilar visits Benito in his hospital room and notices an odd smell. Ramon enters, apologizes for his earlier comments, and tells Pilar that the press has arrived to interview her. She hesitantly complies, though she forgoes Ramon’s pre-written political speech for her own simple statement. She gets her photo taken beside Benito’s bed, holding his hand, and realizes that the smell she’d noticed previously is the cheap hospital soap in which the nurses wash Benito. Pilar recalls when Benito had brashly challenged another congressman to a duel. Both men had nicked each other with their swords, and Benito sustained a scar above his hip. Pilar asks Yano if Benito had ever cheated on her—she is curious because she herself had been unfaithful twice, although she’d found the sex unsatisfying. Yano evades her question. Many of Benito’s supporters begin rallying behind him. They assemble outside the hospital and proclaim him as their next president. Two Black boxers, whose matches Benito had often attended to court the Black vote, give an interview outside the hospital. Pilar asks to be alone with her husband; she bathes him, hoping to rid him of the smell of hospital soap. Suddenly, Benito briefly comes to consciousness, moaning, grabbing Pilar’s shoulders, and perhaps attempting to kiss her, before dying. Pilar lays her husband back down on his bed, undresses, and lies next to him, naked. She is finally able to remember when their marriage had fully deteriorated—after Benito’s duel, while tending to his wounds, she had tried to initiate sex but ended up pressing on one of his sore spots. He had screamed in pain, but she kept going further and would not stop—even when he slapped her across the face.