She has a way with her patients, calm and measured and yet very private and closed off. She truly cares for the people with whom she works but she shares little of her own sadly tragic life with them, keeping a professional distance. In the early 1930s, when Zelda Fitzgerald is committed to the hospital and placed under Anna's care, this reserve starts to slowly crumble. Anna narrates Zelda's story, sits in judgment over Scott, and becomes a necessary part of the Fitzgeralds' lives. As Zelda submits to treatment, she writes her story privately for Anna and Anna divulges the heartbreaking pain in her own background. When Zelda is released from Phipps, against medical advice, Anna leaves with her to become her private nurse, living with the Fitzgeralds and seeing firsthand the dark side of passion in their volatile and tumultuous marriage.