Chase was angry and Lily could hear it. Furious, in fact. She gave up arguing in favor of treating her. She laid out gloves, a bag of sterile saline and a sterile basin, Betadine, and the dressing she’d need to rebandage it. “How did you know who they were?”

“Their dogs were wearing GPS collars—that’s how the guys follow them through the forest. The bear was tagged too. So we knew her home range and that she had cubs.”

Lily sighed, defeated. Of course Chase would have stayed until the call was finished. “Up on the table so I can get this cleaned up. These are deep—at least one is down to fascia. God, Chase, how did you function after this?”

“I’ve got some numbness in that area. That probably took the edge off.”

“I see,” Lily said, and she did, as the surgical scar that ran from the base of Chase’s neck down the middle of her back, and likely the injury beneath, would have damaged some of the sensory nerves. Her stomach churned as she assessed in her mind’s eye what the damage must’ve been, and the level of pain and fear, and a recovery as painful as the injury. “What level was your break?”

“T-four five,” Chase said.

“God, you were lucky,” Lily murmured.

“Yeah,” Chase said in a flat tone. “They kept telling me that. Took me a long time to accept it.”

Lily laid a hand gently on Chase’s uninjured shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know what you lost, and you must’ve worked mercilessly in PT to recover the way you have. But you’re here, moving, doing what it seems to me you love to do.”

The rigid tension in the muscles beneath her fingers drained away. “You read that right, Lily. I was lucky. I know it.”

Lily removed her hand and straightened. “Well, you were lucky again last night. If I’d seen you right away, which I should have,” she said, her voice hardening with exasperation, “I could’ve cleaned this out and possibly sutured it. Now, this long after the injury, that’s not a good idea. The risk of infection is much higher with delayed closure of contaminated wounds like this.”

“I hear you. Got a look at it with a mirror last night. Ought to close all right.”

“Yes, it should.” Lily worked as they talked, irrigating away the few clots with a dilute Betadine solution before irrigating with saline again. “And if you’re careful, you don’t have to go on the injured list.”

Chase swiveled on the table to face her head-on. “You weren’t even thinking of that, were you?”

“Yes,” Lily said with asperity, “given that you’ve been mauled by a bear, that had crossed my mind.”

“This was not a mauling. You have to trust me to be the judge on this.”

“Really? Because you are not prone to take chances, or consider yourself superhuman?” She was angry too, and not doing a very good job of hiding it. The injury could have been so much worse. What if the damn bear had swiped six inches higher and a little more forward? It would have severed Chase’s carotid. She could have—probably would have—bled out right there. And Lily would not have known. Could not have helped. Would have lost someone else—someone whose face, whose laugh, whose stubborn strength and gentle touch had emerged from the mass of faceless hundreds she’d tried to save and couldn’t to awaken her soul. Lily’s stomach churned.