By the fourth week of our so-called six-week transition, everything broke open.
It wasn’t even subtle. Dr. Jennifer Walsh from the Wyoming State Department of Health rolled into Cedar Falls with a whole entourage, cameras, sound equipment, a couple of people in black t-shirts who clearly thought they were about to shoot a Netflix special. She walked straight into Dr. Kim’s clinic like she owned the place, shaking hands, smiling, talking fast about “rural mental health innovation” and “statewide replication.”
She was all teeth and confidence when she found me. “Ms. Martinez, your work here is exactly the kind of model we need to scale. The state wants to document what you’ve built, so we can present it at a national conference.”
I stood in the doorway of my office and watched two strange
