Julius Vrooder returns from the Vietnam War, pretending to be crazy to cope with the world which lands him in a VA hospital. He locates a tunnel where he creates a bunker existence complete with electricity while also falling in love with his doctor.

A Silver Star and Purple Heart recipient for his service in the Vietnam War, twenty-two year old Julius Vrooder is a voluntary patient in the psychiatric ward of a VA Hospital in San Diego. Although he is indeed suffering some emotional issues the result of his time in the war above and beyond those Purple Heart scars from which he has fully recovered, Julius is somewhat hiding in the hospital as a way to avoid real life. The true acuity of his facilities can be seen by the secret and fortified underground bunker he has created for himself in the wooded area by the freeway adjacent to the hospital and cemetery grounds, where he has been assigned a job as a gravedigger. The bunker is complete with running water, electricity and telephone service, all of which he has managed to pilfer free from the main lines of the respective utility companies. The worst of that real life if he was to "go home" to live with his conservative parents, his mother in return truthful that he, in his current state, scares her. Regardless, Julius' primary psychiatrist, Dr. Melvin Passki, has diagnosed him as "psychiatrically impaired", especially as Julius' purposefully disruptive antics around the hospital are the bane of his existence. Those activities have however made him the idol of a few of the hospital's "lifers". What and who may be the catalyst for Julius to return to some sense of a world outside of the hospital for good is nurse Zanni Willis, the two who are mutually attracted to each other beyond her affection for his seeming zest for life. The one big problem for them as a couple beyond their nurse-patient relationship is that she is the unofficial fiancée of Dr. Passki.—Huggo