Something The Lord Made (TV) (2004)

SOMETHING THE LORD MADE is a moving story of men who defy the rules and start a medical revolution. Their patients are known as the "blue babies" - infants suffering from a congenital heart defect that turns them blue as they slowly suffocate. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and Vivien Thomas (Mos Def) make a brilliant team. But even as they race against time to save one particular baby, the two occupy different places in society. Blalock is the white, wealthy head of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Thomas is black and poor, a skilled carpenter whose dream of going to college and becoming a doctor was ruined by the Great Depression, although he was naturally gifted with the intuition and dexterity of a great surgeon. Even as they save lives and invent a whole new field of medicine, social pressures threaten to tear them apart. Ultimately, however, Thomas finds his dreams coming true in unexpected ways.