In Lisbon during one winter morning between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., a forty-year-old woman waits anxiously for the birth of her first child. To ease her fear and pain, her much younger partner tells a series of strange, tragic, and humorous stories as the hours pass. As the baby is finally born, one of the stories ends with a body recovered from the river, linking life and death in the city.