So let's go back to the beginning. This is a truly sad story. A family struggling to get along, the breadwinner can't find a meaningful job, and they are barely making ends meet. Mike, who dreams of being a body-builder, collapses during an after-church softball game, and at the hospital, it is discovered he will die without a heart transplant. The sadder news is that the family's health insurance has been proportionally cut back because of the cut backs in the amount of time the father is now working. Now, the insurance will not cover the quarter-million-dollar cost of the heart transplant. In the meeting with the doctor and hospital administrator, John pleads for a 'favor' to save his son's life. When all this fails, John Q resorts to taking hostages in the hospital and demanding his son get a heart transplant or he'll start killing people.