About the project

SYNOPSIS:
 

After losing two patients, Dr. Justine Windsor, an accomplished Washington, D.C., ER physician, reaches a quiet tipping point. She can no longer ignore the limits of emergency medicine.

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At a museum event, Dr. Ben Rector, chief of surgery at a South Dakota reservation clinic, approaches her, mentions the article she wrote on the medicine wheel, and surprises her with a three-month sabbatical offer. Hoping to learn about Lakota approaches to healing, Justine accepts despite the misgivings of her father and her boyfriend, Simon.

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Upon arriving at Rosebud, Justine is immediately put through the wringer. By the time she meets her first patient, Nellie Redmoon, Justine looks a wreck. Even the house assigned to her has seen better days. Justine sets about repairing it as she settles into her work at the clinic.

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On a house call, Justine finds Nellie’s living room full of people. She recognizes a few from the clinic and begins to suspect Nellie is a Medicine Woman. She wants to learn from Nellie, but Nellie has her own ideas about what that will require and sends Justine on a camping trip with three of her closest Lakota friends.

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Soon after Justine returns, Nellie’s husband Daniel collapses while performing an inipi (sweat lodge) ceremony. Justine turns to her father, a neurosurgeon with whom she has argued over the limits of medicine, for help with Daniel’s surgery.

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With the house repaired, her time at Rosebud has come to a difficult close. Justine leaves, but reluctantly. Before driving off the reservation, she catches sight of Daniel dancing in the pasture in his regalia. She slows to watch, then turns toward home with purpose, hoping to find a way forward with Simon, her father and her career.

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