Sydney Wells, at the start of the film, is a successful classical violinist, although blind since the age of 5. She and her sister had been playing with fireworks and they had been set off too close to her face, damaging her corneas.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Sydney undergoes a cornea transplant which causes her vision, albeit blurry, to begin returning. At first, she is confused and disoriented, unable to understand if what she sees is "real" or not. During her first night with her new eyes, her bedmate at the hospital dies, and Sydney, not understanding, watches her blurry figure being led away by someone else. During her stay, she also befriends a young girl named Alicia, who is there undergoing surgery for a brain tumor.
As time goes on, Sydney's vision begins to clear up and she struggles to understand the new world around her. Her therapist, Paul Faulkner, feels that her strange visions are her mind's way of interpreting what it was never able to before: including visions of fire, death, and the number '106'. Her bedroom walls keep changing to stone and back again, and she sees what appears to be the ghosts of people around her, including a young woman who walks right through her in the street just before she sees her body lying on the ground.
With Alessandro Nivola, Chloe Moretz, Jessica Alba Parker Pose.
