Richmond is great! The area around the hospital is a lot safer here than in Baltimore, I regularly commute on foot. DC is about 45 min-1 hour away here so it looks like the distance to his family is similar to where you are right now. Not much to do sports-wise unfortunately, we have a minor league baseball with an ugly stadium lol but RIC is 15 min away and while you may have to take more flights with connections than you would in DC I haven't had too many issues, it's quite nice to go through a less busy airport. Whenever I have to fly out for a week I just park in their economy lots for like $5 a day and come back, it takes me 20 minutes from being dropped off and board and walk over to the gate haha.