Just before he is to be operated on, forty year old Fred C. Dobbs tells his curious surgeon and the large number in the gallery of how he got into his unique situation, the story which starts in his life as Peter Ingersoll. Despite Peter loving his wife, Nancy, and their two adolescent children, Peter and Nancy just were not in sync with each other. Compounding his general dissatisfaction with life was a sales job he disliked with Granite Life and Casualty Insurance Co. His only respite in life was his love of fishing, something Nancy didn't like him doing in the cost of the activity in their already stretched budget versus the benefit. His life took a definite downward spiral when his friend and physician Dr. Scott Carter diagnosed him with a terminal heart condition, the prognosis being a few months to live. Nancy, wanting to see Peter happy in his short remaining time, suggested he take a dream fishing vacation around the world on his own, charging everything. By the time the bills would come in a few months down the road, he would be dead, and Nancy could claim that he abandoned her, making her not liable for his bills but still leaving her free to collect on his $150,000 life insurance policy in they not being able to deny a grieving widow. By the time Peter had many fishing and other adventures he estimates in the realm of $100,000 worth, he was located by Scott who informed him of equipment malfunction in his tests, and that he was not really dying. Unable to pay what he had charged for the vacation, Peter, with Scott's help, concocted a plan to defraud the credit companies while being able to live a better life than whence he came. But Peter decided unilaterally to change the plan in his sense of justice, which led to the reason he is now on an operating table under a different name.—Huggo