The young Doctor delivers a self-serving eulogy at a funeral. The Bolsheviks take over. The Young Doctor is required to make a life-changing decision when a train is derailed.
Pelageya is sick with either malaria or typhus as the Young Doctor becomes more fixated with Natasha.
A young doctor who has graduated at the top of his class from the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry is thrust out into an isolated and impoverished country side as the village's only doctor. As he learns to adapt to his new lifestyle, he develops a morphine addiction to stay his sanity while realizing what being a doctor in the real world means.