“Yangkar’s gompa has been gone for decades,” Shan said. As he sipped his tea he saw a large aluminum case in the shadows by the wall. On its side were the words in large black figures. For Emergency Medical Use. A medical kit had been stolen from the highway ambulance after all.

Lhakpa saw Shan’s gaze and stepped to block his view of the case. But Shan was not interested in pressing him about the theft on the highway, for he now saw that the remaining figure at the end of the chamber was the nurse. “Someone died and didn’t die,” he said as he recalled his first conversation with Yankay. “Those women are chanting the Bardo for the dead but also invoking mother Tara, who protects the living.” He looked toward the nurse. “Impossible!” he whispered as realization struck him. Yankay moved as if to stop him as Shan took a step toward the far end of the cave but Lhakpa put a restraining hand on his brother’s shoulder.

The nurse was sitting as Shan approached, singing in a low voice. It wasn’t a pile of blankets beside her, it was a pallet. She was holding the hand of her patient. Although much of the prostrate woman’s head, including her right eye, was covered with bandages, her long blond hair spilled out over the pallet.

“She has never regained consciousness,” the healer said. “I fear her eye is ruined. She seems unable to speak. But most days she accepts the broth we feed her. Her skull was badly fractured. The journey down the mountain would have killed her.”

Shan sank to his knees. Yankay had asked Shan about what happened when a soul and body changed their mind after dying. Natalie Pike lay before him, alive and not alive.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lhakpa ignored Shan’s queries, making only light conversation as they returned down the treacherous path along the side of the mountain. The nurse too had declined to answer any of his questions, only explaining that they had found Natalie on the day after the explosion, under the debris of a half-collapsed chapel. When they reached the safety of the forested trail Lhakpa finally turned and answered the first of Shan’s questions. “How could we tell anyone?” the snow monk asked. “As soon as they learned she was alive those who intended to kill her would come to finish the job, along with all who helped her.”

“It’s why you and Jaya reacted so strangely when I said her father had come to the valley.”

Lhakpa eyed Shan as if searching for something hidden in his choice of words. A heavy weight seemed to descend on the Tibetan. “What could we do for her father, Shan? The hope we might give him would probably be false.”

“Surely you know what must be done. Get her to a hospital.”