When a doctor takes a job at a retirement home, he expects boring interactions and slow days. Instead, he finds himself entranced by the condition of one resident who hears music from her past clearly in one of her ears at all times. As she describes the music she’s hearing, she turns back time, bringing him into her world as a young flapper girl, seducing men and drinking wildly. While he grows his friendship with the woman at the retirement home, his loveless marriage strains even more and his home life is only bearable because of his close relationship with his daughter, who suffers from a progressive genetic disorder. As he learns more about the woman from her stories and census records, he discovers that her fading health is connected with his own daughter's and that when one dies the other will too.