Lily smiled. Vibes. She hadn’t had a sense of those in over two years. Probably because there were none, but even had there been, she wouldn’t have noticed them. First she’d been too shell-shocked by the rapidity with which the pandemic had engulfed her, and eventually too numbed to any emotion other than duty to notice the absence of sensation in her life. Why had that suddenly changed?

“The clinic?” Sarah said, her voice rising at the end.

“Oh!” Lily drew herself back into the present. Where she promised herself she would stay, no matter what it took. “It’s pretty amazing.”

It really was. The cabin housing the clinic—still made of logs, of course, but finished with a sensible tile floor throughout—was at least three times the size of the others on the mountainside, with a waiting room just inside the entrance and an astonishingly well-equipped treatment area with several exam rooms and one procedure room in the rear. The adjustable table in the center of the procedure room could be converted to an OR table. The overhead lights looked like they’d be right at home in any city OR too. Stainless steel shelves were stocked with bandages, slings, splints, and what appeared to be sterile packages of surgical instruments. She turned to Sarah and folded her arms. “This looks like overkill for a walk-in clinic. You’re not expecting me to do an appendectomy, are you?”

“That’s the state for you,” Sarah said with a grimace. “Last year we didn’t have enough PFDs at the start of the season. I had to advance my own money to cover life vests for all the campers until the POs from the state came through. But we had an unlimited spending budget for healthcare. So”—she waved a hand—“I stocked up.”

“It’s excellent, and as soon as I have a chance,” Lily said, “I’ll go through everything, and if I find any shortages, I’ll let you know.” She frowned and looked around. A red equipment cart with four rows of drawers occupied a spot behind the treatment table. She opened the top drawer, then the next. Epinephrine, lidocaine, bicarb, IVs, bags of saline. Typical cardiac arrest paraphernalia found in every crash cart in every ER in the United States. No analgesics or sedatives. “Is there a drug locker besides that cart?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “This way.”

A door on the right side of the room led into a small office set up as an informal consultation room with a leather sofa in the center of a big multicolored braided rug, a couple of matching chairs, and an oak desk against one wall that looked like it’d seen a lot of use in a previous life.

“There’s a bathroom in the back.” Sarah gestured toward a tall gray metal cabinet tucked into one corner. “That”—she pointed at the cabinet—“contains a limited supply of prescription pain medication, antipsychotics, sedatives, and morning-after pills. You and I have the only keys.”

“Oh boy,” Lily said. “Will we be needing the morning-after pills?”