Hi Jellyman!
The situation you described reminded me of a situation I have been facing, but which has fortunately not resulted in catastrophy.
Now that hunting works reasonably well, I tend to send out hunters to get rid of all those tree felling cancellations. One of my hunters was a legendary weaver (a.k.a one of those guys who have created those 3,000 value artifacts) and things started when I got a suspicious job interruption from her. Sure enough, there she was in the wilderness with the red cross blinking and half a dozen tiles away there was a seriously injured cougar. Both seemed to have had enough fun and were trying to get away from each other.
I figured that the other hunter would take care fo the cougar and someone would rescue her.
Sure enough, I got the cancellation of a recover wounded job. Changing plans, I drafted the miner who had failed in the recovery and had him finish off the cougar. I undrafted him - and no recover wounded job.
I waited for one or two seasons, drafted and undrafted the weaver, put more beds in my barracks - nothing. No dwarf ever wanted to recover her again as she was moving around the wilderness with the red cross blinking. Well, at least they did give her water.
Her wounds consisted mainly of a read wound for the left arm, but it was enough to cause her serious trouble.
This situation was a nightmare for me. On the one hand, this fortress had already seen a siege before, so the wilderness was not safe. On the other hand, in order to protect my pacifist dwarves, the entrance area of the fortress proper has 4 or 5 layers of weapon traps. While it would have probably taken her two years to reach the entrance given her current speed, if she had actually reached it, she would have been dwarf on a stick in no time.
I finally came up with the best solution building a tiny hut out in the wilderness and putting a bed assigned to her into it.
Someone rescued her and put her into the bed and she has been resting there ever since.
That dwarf is definitely a very lucky dwarf and I hope I will be able to give her some special rooms once all my nobles have what they need (I just got the baron set, so I have 4 nobles without any rooms and my miners are busy digging channels outside (^_^;; ).
Ever since she moved into that hut, I had one nasty goblin ambush (more than half a dozen dead pets and 2 dead dwarves) and economy set in (that really scared me, but then I noticed she was legendary, so she didn't get evicted). Thus far, she is doing good and I can really hope for her to recover eventually.
Deathworks