In a small American town in 1947, widowed Ruth Hartley, 37, and her friends Cora Miller, 31, and Elizabeth Gustafson, 28, have made a makeshift brothel out of Ruth's house, where they provide sexual services to men and women alike. One night, Mrs. Patricia Watson, the stuffy president of the Garden Club, comes to the house with a request: she would like to treat her husband,, just out of the hospital after a work injury, to a medical fantasy where Ruth, Cora and Elizabeth would pretend to be doctors and nurses: running "tests," "prepping" him for "surgery," performing an intense "operation," and providing post-op "therapy" to help him "recover." The women agree, but only if Mrs. Watson participates in the fantasy as well.