Something the Lord Made tells the story of the 34-year partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 when Blalock (Alan Rickman) hires Thomas (Mos Def) as an assistant at his Vanderbilt University lab, expecting him to perform janitorial work.

The film traces the two men's work when they move in 1943 from Vanderbilt to Johns Hopkins, an institution where the only black employees are janitors and where Thomas must enter by the back door.

Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson), the pediatrician/cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, challenges Blalock to come up with a surgical solution for her Blue Babies.

Blalock interprets his dream as implying that their sewing technique did not work because the sutures failed to grow with the heart, and developed a new version with that feature.

As news quickly spreads of their successes, parents from all over the country flock to the hospital with their sick children, hoping that the surgery can cure them too.

The film concludes with a title card revealing that Blalock and Thomas's work launched the field of cardiac surgery, and that doctors in the United States now perform over 1.75 million heart operations per year.

[4][5] The film was shot in part in the historic Warfield Complex, Hubner, and T Buildings of the Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville, Maryland.