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In a near-future Danish university and pharmaceutical setting, a new drug meant to ease prolonged grief is moving toward approval. A psychology professor suspects the study data has been manipulated and that a serious side effect is being hidden.

To investigate, he brings in two students with different strengths and personal stakes: one deeply affected by grief, the other highly skilled with statistics. Their private inquiry pulls them into the tensions between research, ethics, medicine, and profit.

Alongside the investigation runs the story of the drug’s inventor, whose own loss drives her work. As the characters’ lives intersect, the novel raises questions about whether grief should be treated as a disorder and what may be lost when pain is medicated away.