Doctor Forrest Janney is asked by his brother to operate on his nephew Pinky, who has been shot in the head. Doctor Janney refuses, as he never liked Pinky for what he did to a sweet girl named Mary Decker, and his hands shake too much now to operate. He angers his brother's family and heads back home. Then, a tornado comes and devastates the town, injuring many. Doctor Janney ends up tending to people at the previously abandoned hospital, working alongside the local Doctor Behrer despite their dislike of each other. Janney knows everyone and efficiently gets everyone patched up. He even operates on Pinky in the end. Later, he drives around and sees a little girl he'd seen before the tornado, playing with her cat. He speaks with her, feeling a paternal protectiveness, as he knows her father had died that morning. On the way home he sees his other nephew, Butch, who tells him that he doesn't think Pinky will last the day, despite Doctor Janney's surgery. Janney offers his condolences, though Butch doesn't seem convinced of his sincerity. On the way home, another tornado improbably strikes. The second tornado doesn't injure anyone, luckily enough, but destroys Janney's drug store. Janney decides to leave town then, escaping his tattered reputation and a town he knows very well. He decides to go to Montgomery, where he heard that the little girl with the cat had gone. He'll protect her the way she said her father had protected her from the tornado's damage, and died for it. And so he decides to give up drinking, for the sake of the little girl.