Sylvia Benton is married to socially prominent but dissolute Jim Benton. On the way home from a country club dance, Sylvia announces to Jim that she is going to leave him. He warns her that she will never get any money out of him, but she responds that she will go back to nursing. During their quarrel, the car crashes and Jim is badly injured. Sylvia leaves Connecticut and obtains a job at a New York hospital. She is a good nurse and well-liked by the other nurses, doctors and patients. She calms wrestling manager Frankie Sylvestrie when he demands to be released from the hospital despite his broken leg, and sympathizes with nurse Schloss, who is in love with a policeman. Both flirtatious Dr. Greg Connolly and responsible Dr. Hedwig are in love with Sylvia. Hedwig even asks her to marry him, but she turns down all offers with no explanation. Although she is normally the calmest of nurses, she goes to pieces one day when Hedwig operates on a psychopathic woman to restore her sanity. When Greg vows his love to Sylvia, telling her that he has stopped seeing all other women, she admits that she is married and cannot get a divorce because her husband is violently insane from injuries sustained during the automobile accident. Hedwig offers to help her, but Sylvia believes that nothing can be done. When Pat, Schloss's policeman fiancé, is killed before they can be married, Greg convinces Sylvia that they should grab happiness while they can because they never know when life will end. Then Jim appears at the hospital during a rare sane period. Although he does not realize that Sylvia is working there, he has heard that Hedwig may be able to operate and help him. When Hedwig realizes that he is Sylvia's husband, he tells her that she must decide if Jim should have the operation. She finally agrees, but when her patient Sylvestrie hears the story, he visits Jim before his surgery and, pretending not to know that Jim is Sylvia's husband, relates her story, suggesting that the right thing for the husband to do would be to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Greg tells Sylvia that even if Jim recovers, they should continue their affair, an idea that repulses her. When Jim jumps from the hospital window, Sylvia quits her job. She says good-bye to Hedwig, who proposes to her when he learns that she is not marrying Greg. She accepts and they continue to work together.
