 Young Svetlana (Olga Arntgolts), just out of nursing school, begins her first job working at the Second District Neuropsychological Hospital. The hospital, which only takes up to ten patients at a time, has an unusual history. Located in the countryside in a palatial manor, surrounded by peaceful woodlands of birch and oak, where wild raspberries grow and squirrels chatter in trees, the hospital had once been the estate of the Count Makarov. In 1938, after his sixteen-year-old son suffered a psychotic breakdown, Politburo Leader Sobolev had used his influence in the Communist Party to take control of the estate, and established the hospital there as a small, elite, comfortable asylum for the mentally ill. There are not many staff members: just two psychiatrists, the likable Dr. Makarov (Aleksei Grishin), whom, due to his last name (just a coincidence), everyone affectionately calls "The Count", and the odd and depressed Dr. Levin (Sergei Chonishvili), whom everyone imagines must be guilty of something, and the mute attendant Barsukov (Sergei Romanyuk), a large, husky man who terrifies most of the staff, but is much loved by the patients, along with a few other orderlies and guards. There are not many more patients: only young Alyosha, whose parents visit him every day, Fedot, an inarticulate old man who claims to have been a servant of the Count, Levchenko, who constantly claims he is mentally healthy, despite his often bizarre behavior, along with a few others characters. The local Second District Police Officer is Misha Markov (Kirill Pletnev). The son of wealthy, powerful, politically connected parents, he graduated from an exclusive, private high school in the United States before completing a law degree at the Moscow State School of Law. But, rather than establishing a law practice, he had decided to seek a simple life of honest human relations, and abandoned his law career in the big city for his job as a police officer in the countryside. Altogether, everyone s life was simple and predictable, and would have continued this way. But, one day, the old patient Fedot is found murdered, with signs of torture on his body. Officer Markov begins investigating the crime, but his superiors, for mysterious reasons, become interested in the case and take control. They send in a special agent, Detective Serdyuka, who begins to carefully and methodically unravel Fedot s murder. As he continues to push for the truth, several long-buried secrets are brought to light: almost nothing, it turns out, is as it appears, and almost nobody is as they seem.