Rita Saverino made a career in the cold-eyed world of investment banking where success and failure are measured in profit and loss. Now, this warm and affectionate mother of two boys must face the worst kind of risk analysis. She must calculate whether to have a rare surgery in an effort to excise a tumor the size of a grapefruit growing behind her liver. Dr. Tomoaki Kato is world famous for this operation - known as "ex vivo" - in which all of Rita's major abdominal organs will be removed, cleared of the adherent sarcoma, and put back into her body. For Rita’s family, it is a gamble for life, a wager they cannot refuse.