At last Yeshe Donden straightens, gently placing the woman s hand on the bed, and steps back. The interpreter produces a small wooden bowl and two sticks. He sets down the bowl and turns to leave. Thank you, doctor, she says, and touches with her other hand the place he had held on her wrist as though to recapture something that had visited there. Yeshe Donden turns back for a moment to gaze at her, then steps into the corridor.
Rounds are at an end.
We are seated once more in the conference room. Yeshe Donden speaks now for the first time in soft Tibetan sounds that I have never heard before. He has barely begun when the young interpreter begins to translate, the two voices continuing in tandem, a bilingual fugue, one chasing the other. It is like the chanting of monks. He speaks of winds coursing through the body of the woman, currents that break barriers, eddying.