SYNOPSIS:

While most sixteen year-old South Dakota kids pass time joyriding in pickup trucks, you find Brian Thomas out buzzing the football team with his dad's airplane. Flying is his life, to the point of influencing his decision process in selecting a treatment plan for the life-threatening bleeding disorder, Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura, that he's battled since he was two years old. After yet another bleeding episode, Brian undergoes chemotherapy. Faced with horrible side effects and no improvement of his bleeding, the FAA strips him of his medical certificate. In a last-ditch effort to regain control of his disease and his flight status, Brian agrees to have his spleen removed. The treatment fails, and now he is also saddled with a life-long lowered resistance to infections. Brian graduates from high school and becomes an airplane mechanic. He moves to Lincoln, Nebraska and takes a job at Duncan Aviation. There, he meets Jackie, a nurse who lives in the same apartment building, and they begin a relationship. Things are looking good, until he gets sick while at work, and within four hours is on life support. In the week he hovers near death in a coma, gangrene ravages his face and extremities. He wakes up from the coma only to be told he will likely be a quadruple-amputee. A series of surgeries and skin grafts leaves him a triple-amputee with extensive scarring on his remaining left hand, and mostly deaf. His parents get rid of his apartment and move his belongings in to Jackie's without his knowledge. He isn't sure he wants to live, period-- let alone live with her. When Brian discovers that he's been placed on antidepressants without his consent, he decides to take control of his own life. After discharge from the rehab hospital, he moves in with Jackie and tries to make things work. However, things fall apart in their relationship. Faced with the prospect of going on disability, he instead chooses to return to Duncan in a desk job. He moves into his own apartment and learns to face life from a wheelchair. The lure of the sky continues to call. First, he tries skydiving. Fun, but not nearly the same. After a vacation spent flying with his brother, Brian considers the uphill battle of regaining an active pilot's license. The FAA inspector assigned to his check flight has doubts, and the flight doesn't exactly go as planned. The question is if a nearly-deaf, triple-amputee can actually control an airplane. You'd better believe he can.