“I’ll go.”
He looked surprised.
“But I’m not going there to approve your plan.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to decide whether Oregon makes sense for me too.”
He nodded.
“Okay.”
And this time, that word sounded different.
It didn’t sound like resistance.
It sounded like permission.
Oregon surprised me.
I wanted to hate it.
I wanted the streets to be ugly.
I wanted the neighborhoods to feel wrong.
I wanted the schools to be terrible.
I wanted to walk into Ben’s new hospital and immediately know that none of this could work.
Instead, I liked it.
I liked the quiet streets.
I liked the parks.
I liked the bakery near the hotel.
I liked the little bookstore near the hospital.
I liked how families walked together in the evenings.
And that scared me.
Because Oregon wasn’t the problem.
The way Ben had chosen it without me was.
That evening, we had dinner with some of the people Ben would work with.
