After performing a recent tracheotomy made him famous, the young doctor is inundated with patients. However, despite his newfound celebrity, behind closed doors he begins to experience the embarrassing and unsavoury side effects that have been plaguing his older self.

Repulsed by what is happening to his body, the young doctor takes a bath. Joined in the tub by Hamm, he vows to make a clean start and decides to open a specialist syphilis clinic to combat the disease rife in his remote village.

During a long journey to a patient with a critical head injury, he defiantly hurls the key to the morphine cupboard into the snow. But, on his return, withdrawal symptoms hit him hard. His older self makes an unwelcome appearance in the carriage, blaming the young doctor for destroying his life, dignity and friendships with his weakness.

In too deep to heed the warning and turn his life around, he throws himself from the carriage and begins to search for the lost key. But, while scrabbling in the snow, he spirals into dark hallucinations in which he is haunted by a terrible fate and a visit from his revered predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich.