Sam Lindsay, an older independent woman, decides to end her medical treatment and take off into the wilderness. Dr. Quinn accompanies her and learns from the journey. Myra Bing goes into labor and Colleen finds what she is capable of.

When Colleen, who is working on a college paper, asks Dr. Mike to recall her most memorable case, Dr. Mike looks back on the five turbulent years she's lived and loved in Colorado Springs. As they sit with Andrew, who is mysteriously ill at the clinic, Dr. Mike reminisces about her tumultuous career -- its successes and its failures -- and realizes how many divergent cases she has seen and treated. When Andrew's condition takes a turn for the worse, Dr. Mike warns Colleen about the fine line between emotional involvement and professional detachment, an issue with which she has long struggled in the frontier town that's now her home.