Days before her wedding, Morgana receives a letter from her fiance breaking off their engagement. Leaving the post office in a daze, she steps into the path of an oncoming car and is struck. She survives the immediate accident, only to learn that the brain injury she has sustained is fatal and that she has little time left to live. Resolving to spend what remains quietly, she returns to nursing, where she meets Festa, an Englishwoman recovering from pneumonia and a broken leg who longs to return to her home on a tropical Portuguese island. Knowing Morgana's circumstances, Festa invites her to come along as her private nurse to a place where no one but Festa will know the truth about her condition. On the island, far from everything familiar, Morgana finds herself drawn into new relationships and confronted with the possibility of love even as the shadow of her diagnosis hangs over her. The story, written in the gentle convention of mid-century romance, balances tenderness against the poignancy of borrowed time, following a heroine determined to live fully in whatever days she has left.