The series is inspired by doctor Pierdante Piccioni, former chief of the emergency room of Lodi and Codogno, who forgot the previous 12 years of his life following a car accident.
][citation needed] Professor Andrea Fanti is a brilliant and famous doctor working at the Policlinico Ambrosiano hospital of Milan, where he is the chief of the internal medicine department.
Consequently, he treats those under his care with a heavy-handed and often cruel manner and trusts only the handpicked members of his staff, especially his assistant Giulia Giordano, a doctor with whom he has a secret relationship.
Thrown into a present he sometimes struggles to understand, obliged to start over most of his life and to deal with relevant trauma like his child's death and the separation from his wife (which he forgot), he perceives his loved ones as strangers.
No longer able to be the chief of the department he used to be in charge of, he comes back to work as a "doctor with limitations", that is a kind of assistant for young residents, who nickname him Doc, and uses empathy to interact with patients and help solve their medical issues.
However, the hospital had limited resources and people to cope with thousands of patients in a very short time, so, once the emergency ends, the high number of dead doctors and patients leads to an investigation by both the Italian Magistrates' court and the hospital itself, involving all the medical staff, medical director Agnese Tiberi, Andrea Fanti and his team.
Among the victims of COVID-19, there is Lorenzo Lazzarini, a member of Fanti's team later identified as the patient zero, the one who unintentionally introduced the virus in the Policlinico: only his colleagues know the truth about him being the index case and they keep the secret to honour his memory.
The lawyer Caruso, also chief of the administrative department, is appointed as the new medical director with the aim of finding out the truth about how the doctors tackled the pandemic emergency.