After forty-two years as a jack-of-all trades in the town of Dumster, Vermont, Doc Conger finds himself increasingly out of step with the practice and teaching of medicine. He is reluctantly considering retirement, when an experience in the emergency room makes him realize that he still has something to contribute. As he dedicates himself to the treatment of those whose illness has in large part been contracted by the ministrations of his own profession, he finds new purpose, serving the underserved in the same environment that he started his career more than four decades ago.