And it is a lie.

My competence had not vanished when the twins were born.

My authority had not evaporated.

My professional brilliance, if I may call it that, was not gone, only dormant, waiting, buried under the fog, entirely intact, available the moment I remembered to reach for it.

The four days Julian gave me were, more than anything, four days in which I dug that woman back up.

I put on the suit not as a costume but as an excavation, a way of reaching down through six months of accumulated exhaustion to touch the person I had been and discover, with enormous relief, that she was still there, undamaged, ready to be called back into service.