In the lockdown ward of a Victoria psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine is in her element. But Nadine doesn't want to look too closely at her own past. It takes all her willpower to clamp down her claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years. When a distraught woman is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her -- and learns of some trouble parallels with her own life. Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island.