By day, Okwe, an undocumented Nigerian immigrant in London, is a cabbie, and by night he mans the front desk of a somewhat seedy hotel. He was a doctor back in his own country, and in London, he has become the unofficial doctor for the other immigrants in his orbit; early in the film, we see Okwe treating his boss at the cab depot for a venereal disease, procuring a medication from his friend, Guo Yi, another immigrant who works at the crematorium at the hospital.
Okwe lives with Senay, a Turkish Muslim woman who works as a maid at the same hotel as Okwe. She lets him live on her couch, but doesn’t want anyone to know. One night while working at the hotel, a friendly prostitute, Juliette, alerts Okwe to a clogged toilet in a room upstairs. When Okwe investigates, he finds that a human heart is the culprit. When Okwe takes it to his boss, Sneaky, Sneaky tells him to do nothing about it and threatens to report him to the authorities if he does.
When immigration authorities await her arrival at the hotel, Senay has to quit her job to go to work in a sweatshop. While she is at the sweatshop her manager forces her to perform sexual acts in exchange for his silence. Soon enough, Okwe learns that the heart is connected to an underground organ market that Sneaky is running out of the hotel. In exchange for a kidney, Sneaky offers desperate immigrants forged passports and the chance at a new life. When Okwe discovers this operation, Sneaky asks Okwe to act as a surgeon in exchange for passports for him and Senay, but Okwe refuses, appalled by Sneaky's actions.
Fed up with the sexual assault she faces at work, Senay leaves the sweatshop and goes to stay with Okwe. When they have a fight, Senay decides to go to Sneaky to sell her kidney for a passport, so she can travel to New York to live with a cousin. Sneaky stipulates that she must give have sex with him, and Senay, a virgin for religious reasons, reluctantly agrees. Afterwards, Okwe comes to the hotel and tells Sneaky he will operate on Senay in order to ensure her safety. Sneaky hands over passports for both Okwe and Senay before they begin the surgery. Okwe invites Sneaky to be his assistant but makes him drink a beer before the surgery, on the pretense that Sneaky's hands shake when he is not drinking. It soon becomes clear that Okwe has laced his drink with a sedative and Sneaky passes out.
Senay jumps up from the makeshift operating table, complicit with Okwe's plot. Okwe operates on Sneaky, removing his kidney and selling it to the organ dealer. Then, Okwe and Senay go immediately to the airport. On the way, Okwe reveals to Senay that in Nigeria, government officials demanded that he cover up a murder. When he refused, they burned down his home with his wife inside, and he feels responsible for her death. He also reveals that he has a seven year old daughter.
As Senay boards a plane to New York, she mouths "I love you" to Okwe and he mouths it back. Okwe then calls his daughter from an airport payphone to let her know he is finally coming home to Nigeria.
