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“He accepted another position.”
I waited.
“Where?”
“Oregon.”
And the Relief Went Away
“What job in Oregon?”
Arnold closed his eyes.
I have known that man for nine years. I know exactly what his silence means, and it means he’s already said more than he meant to and is trying to find the door.
“You’re crying,” I said, “because he’s leaving.”
He wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist.
“He’s my best friend, Chelsea. I thought you knew.”
Eleven Years
Ben and I have been married eleven years.
I have spent every single one of them sharing that man with Mercy Northeast.
He’s a gifted surgeon. Genuinely gifted — I’ve had three separate people stop me in a grocery store to tell me what he did for their father, their wife, their son.
And I was proud of it. I want that on the record. I was proud that the man I married stood in rooms on the worst days of people’s lives and made them survivable.
But Over the Past Year
