“Wow,” Lily said, craning her neck to take it all in. “I feel…small.”

“Wait until it’s crammed with teenagers—you’ll wish it was three times as big.”

Lily laughed.

“Kitchen’s back here—the meal hours are posted on the bulletin board. Coffee, juice, water and the like, plus snacks are always available.”

The kitchen, which was really a euphemism for the enormous commercial cooking area at the rear of the lodge, spanned the entire width of the building with two eight-burner stoves, gleaming stainless steel pots and pans hanging from iron hooks above the stone-topped counters in the center of the room. A man and several women who were busy organizing canned and dry goods on stainless steel racks along one wall looked over as they walked in.

The oldest of the three, a fiftyish redhead with a sturdy body and sharp brown eyes, wiped her hands on her crisp white cargo pants and strode over with an extended hand. “Good morning. I’m Clara Maguire, chief cook and bottle washer here. You must be one of the parents.”

Laughing, Lily took her strong, wide hand. “Lily Davenport. A pleasure to meet you. And no, I’m not one of the parents.”

Sarah said, “Lily’s our new camp doctor.”

“Ah, delighted to meet you, and an improvement I’ll wager over the last doctor.”

Lily glanced at Sarah.

Sarah shrugged. “Archie McIntosh was a delight, but a bit of a grump.”

“I can’t promise anything before morning coffee, but I’ll do my best,” Lily said with a smile.

Sarah and the other two chefs, who introduced themselves as Juan Ramirez and Nancy Li, laughed as well.

“We’re just grabbing coffee, and we’ll be out of your way,” Sarah said.

The coffee station came equipped with three large stainless steel urns, and Lily helped herself to a white ceramic mug and filled it with, as she discovered, exceptionally good coffee.

“I’ll show you our med station first,” Sarah said, leading the way out of the kitchen. “We’ve got a bedroom ready for you upstairs here, but it’s only a short walk to the clinic if you have to see anyone at night.”

“Does that happen often?” Lily’s stomach gave a lurch, an altogether too familiar feeling. The sensation of being awakened after only a few minutes’ sleep with yet another emergency washed over her. She wondered when, if ever, that automatic response would disappear.

“Oh,” Sarah said, apparently not having noticed Lily’s reaction, “we get the usual common ailments—bumps and bruises, contact dermatitis, common colds. Nothing too serious.”

Exactly what Lily wanted to hear. Staffing a walk-in clinic for three months should not be too demanding. “I guess we’re not really that far from civilization, if for some reason we have a true emergency.”

“And we have the rangers, if we need any kind of EMT support.”

“The rangers,” Lily echoed, instantly picturing the dark-haired officer in the Jeep. “I guess I don’t really know what they do.”

“Pretty much anything that needs doing in the district. Fire control, search and rescue, land conservation, education.” She pushed open the big front doors. “And of course, riding herd on all the hikers, hunters, and fishing nuts.”