My name is Sarah Tanaka. It wasn’t always that way: for a while, I was Sarah Johnson, at least in my private life. I didn’t like that version of me, though, the little woman who follows her husband, obeys him, takes his name. I felt ordinary then, one of many, nothing special.

Anyway, Dr. Underwood, thank you for seeing me. I’m here to work through a series of events. I don’t expect you’ll share anything with me that’s classified – unless you want to, of course. I won’t turn down information. But that’s your call, your prerogative. I would never pressure you in any way.

I’m sure of myself, of the person I am today. But I still have questions.

**

I think the first time I realized something was amiss was about two years ago. I was still married to Jonah, and I had just finished my treatment for ovarian cancer. They had to take my entire uterus and ovaries. I was only twenty-nine years old. And at that young age, I was already a VP in telecom, but I had to leave that job when I got sick.

So one day I was this up-and-coming superstar and the next I was on my ass. Like I’d fallen from a treadmill and burned my knees on the hot spinning ground. I remember the day I found out – I was at a hotel bar when I took the call, wearing a short skirt, and my thighs were sticking to the vinyl booth. People were coming and going all around me. People were living life, not thinking about how it might end. I was supposed to meet the staff for drinks – I was traveling for a conference – but instead I was watching an enormous tropical fish. It swam back and forth through the clear water, on display: a trophy. An icon.

I couldn’t stay there. I went upstairs, popped a Xanax, and slept. After that, it was a blur of flights and doctors and hospitals.

Which brings me to you, when things got strange. You’d think the cancer itself was part of that, but I don’t think so. The cancer may have been the start, but I didn’t truly understand it as it was happening.

Jonah and I were at a convention, the kind he travels to all over the country. It was unusual; we didn’t spend much time together in the three years we were married. We never should have done it in the first place. I was never really sure why we went to the courthouse that day. It felt like gravity, like inertia, something we couldn’t help. But lately I’ve been wondering if we wanted to pretend we were permanent, that there was some stability in our lives. That there was a chance someone might be waiting for us when we got home.

Anyway, since I’d been sick, I stayed at home while he did his art thing, and when I finally got the OK to travel, I accompanied him to the convention. Mostly because I was bored.

We were in Evanston, Illinois, and this hotel was podunk, nowhere near the level of class and style I was used to. A Holiday Inn Express. Did they even have “just” Holiday Inn anymore? These Express types were branded for people on the go. As if they could speed up your night: stop and snooze and go. That thought was tempting to the old corporate me. If I could have survived on no sleep at all, I would have done it with fervor.

Old corporate me studied our setting with a cool detachment. She folded her legs over each other and sat next to her husband, the artist.

Women dressed in armor and cloth approached our table. They could pay $20 for a custom portrait, and so they sat for Jonah while I scowled and played on my phone.

Between customers, I asked, “Do we have an expense versus profit spreadsheet for this venture?”

Jonah put down his pen and shook out his wrist. “We can write it off on our taxes.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Even though we’d filed separately every year, because we’d never actually merged our bank accounts and I had no idea what his assets were. I guessed not many. “But have you examined the numbers? Calculated the ROI?”

A woman wearing plate on her breasts and not much else swayed by. Jonah watched her. Either he’d forgotten I was there or he didn’t care. The latter was more likely, since I’d only just spoken.

“Lovely lady, would you like a custom portrait?” Jonah called to her.

She turned and winked. “I already have an original. Bakersfield, remember?”

He waggled an eyebrow. “Oh, yes. How could I forget?”

I cleared my throat.

The woman moved on. The chains on her boots clanked like the ghost of Christmas past. I opened Google Sheets on my phone. “I’ll help you do the analysis. I can increase your profit.”

“Not about the profit, babe.” Jonah pushed back a lock of his black hair. He kept it long to attract customers; women who liked chain mail also seemed to like long hair. Along with very large fantasy novels and several kinds of video games, which Jonah also liked. I should have known at that time that it wouldn’t work out. I should have known when he took his hands and arranged them in a square around my face, as if he were framing me.

**

Jonah has drawn me. It was one of the first things he did, not long after our first date. The portrait still hangs in the entryway of my apartment. Even after I moved out, I could not separate myself from it.

In it, I’m in a power stance, wielding a sword, wearing a fierce growl. I am poised in mid-fight, the momentum in my thrusting arm. I am the consummate warrior, part shogun, descended from heroes. I am one-half Japanese, from my father, and his line goes back – well, I’ve never actually traced it, but I have a feeling. I should get one of those Ancestry DNA kits.

Back to the story. Thanks, Dr. Underwood, for listening as long as you have. You are so patient.

That night we retreated to our Holiday Inn Express for our express sleep. I pulled out my trusty Xanax bottle, and Jonah frowned. “Do you still need that?” He was sprawled on the bed, legs akimbo.

“None of your business.” I swallowed it dry, left the bottle by the sink, and sat beside him, not touching.

“You won’t be awake for room service.”

It was my turn to frown. My hand twitched on the surface of my phone on the bedside table. I liked how the new phones were curved on the edges, made them look galactic. I wanted to make a spreadsheet on that phone. “You haven’t explained how room service fits into your business plan.”

“It’s an investment in myself. Human capital.”

He leaned over me to grab the room phone, that beige anachronism beside my sexy instrument of productivity. He ordered chicken fingers, but I shook my head when he raised his eyebrows at me. Not hungry.

When he hung up, I pressed. “I need justification. More evidence.”

The curtain of my oblivion was coming down, but I pushed against it long enough to hear his answer. “I don’t,” he said.

**

We returned to California. Where we lived was beautiful: the weather was bright most of the time and not oppressively hot. My firm was based in San Francisco. Money flowed in and out, fast, but I had enough to be comfortable, at least until the cancer.

Jonah scared me with his lack of ambition. Until that night, I had hoped he could help me out, at least until I got better. On the plane, I understood that this was not the case. I needed to make my own plan.

I called a fellow VP at Cableview. My company: a former TV giant now making original programming and selling it to anyone who would distribute it. I had been good there, making deals, pinning the markets that were desperate for a hit. “Hey, Andrea,” I said, keeping careful watch over my tone.

“Sarah!” She brightened over the line. “How are you feeling?”

“Good. Much better. Look, I’m wanting to get back in the game. What can you tell me?”

She hesitated. “Well, I don’t think… I mean, the circumstances were such…”

“I was sick. Now, I know my illness was too long to be covered by FMLA, but you must need me back by now. How are profits?”

“That’s the thing.” Andrea sighed. “Walt won’t to lose the VP in your former role. If they bring you back, they’ll need a new strategy, and I don’t think he wants that.”

If. I hated the way that sounded. If I were on an old landline phone, like the beast in the hotel, I’d have been curling its cord, bunching, twisting it in my fingers. As it was, I was pacing, looking down at the bucolic view of Pleasanton below our apartment. “Let me know immediately when the strategy changes.”

I hurled my sweet phone onto the couch, so it would land safely, and stalked away.

Then I realized I couldn’t go very far, so I returned. My phone rested peacefully on the lock screen. Andrea had hung up. I needed to swing at larger objects.

**

“You have no legal leg to stand on,” Jonah said, pushing his greasy curls out of his eyes.

I flinched. I found him so much less attractive after all the desire was sucked from me by the chemo. I could barely recollect the days when we’d claw at each other. Actually, all my life felt like a blurry haze up to this point. It still does, Dr. Underwood.

“I know.” I bit down on the mansplaining and took my tongue with it. Blood welled, and I licked it away, its copper stinging the insides of my mouth. “But they can’t dismiss me out of hand.”

“They can.” Jonah was sitting on the couch, drawing lines with a pen that cost more than our monthly rent. I watched the pen move as if it wasn’t even connected to his hand. “This is your chance to start over. Maybe not work for a while.”

My belly fell. “I can’t not work.”

The pen continued its journey, outlining a figure. It made something where nothing had been before. Jonah did not return an answer. I listened to the sound of the air, the hum of the lights.

“I have to do something,” I said, almost manic.

The pen was the only response. He laid it down and picked up a colored pen. Blue shade filled in the spot where the figure’s skin peeked out of a uniform sleeve. Some kind of sci-fi alien. I supposed there was no longer room for me in the conversation.

**

Dr. Underwood, I will preface this next part by saying I certainly do not mean to say anything bad about your hometown. It’s just that when people outside of Ohio think of Akron, they don’t exactly envision the premier establishment in neurological care. At least I didn’t. I knew about the Cleveland Clinic, but when I thought of Akron, actually, I thought of nothing at all.

I waited until Jonah had gone out – to do what, I wasn’t sure, I was never sure – and I called Walt. Or rather, I called his office. His assistant picked up. Poor guy always talked like he was perpetually tasting a lemon. “Sarah Tanaka,” I said.

“He’ll call you back.”

“I need to speak with him now. It’s urgent.” I was back to pacing the length of the apartment, which was feeling more and more like a cell. Any minute I was going to see people in the walls.

“He’s unavailable.”

“Please.”

“Look.” The assistant – did he have a weird trendy name like Aven or something – Aven cut me off. “Why don’t you go back to Akron and stop badgering Walt. After what you did to him, he’s not in any mood to talk with you.” And I was left to toss the phone at the couch yet again.

**

“Akron?” I asked Jonah that night, after I asked him where he’d been. Turned out he’d been at a show, hadn’t asked me to come. I felt useless here in the apartment, like a non-matching chair or a ruptured appendix.

He let his backpack slide off his shoulder. “What about it. City in Ohio.”

“Walt’s assistant said I went there.”

He took a step past the threshold so he could shut the door and latch it. But instead of looking at me, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinched it between his meaty fingers. “Well, you did. It was part of your treatment.”

“I have no memory of going there.”

It was then that I realized I couldn’t trust my own mind. As I watched Jonah struggle to keep his poker face, even as he refused to meet my eyes – that was the moment I knew. The story was not the one I had been telling myself.

**

The next day, I packed a bag. I went into the walk-in closet, found my pressed suits hanging in a sedate row. I plucked them from the rod and arranged them in my garment bag. Then I began to make calls.

My online address book teemed with contacts. I started at the top. By the time I finished, I had lined up twenty interviews, in the deepest pockets of the world, and I’d travel on the companies’ dimes. I sat down to map my itinerary, and my legs knocked together, buzzing.

When Jonah returned, it was not very different from the previous day, except that I think he had a new understanding of what had happened. Of what was going to happen. We didn’t speak that night, as he drew that woman from Bakersfield again, and I reviewed my portfolio.

Later, when I was installed fully in Portland – the one in Oregon – I asked my new lawyer to send him papers. I was already going back to my old name, fully, on my ID and everything. I never should have covered it with his. My name was that of my warrior father.

I had forged my new identity, back on top, deep in the work. I kept an apartment only to sleep – would have slept in my office if it were practical – and I buried myself. I liked myself best when I couldn’t be seen, beneath all those tasks. I was useful. I gave myself a reason to keep going.

He sent my portrait along with the signed documents. I framed and hung it in my apartment. It is the only art on the walls.

**

So that’s the story of how I got to you, Dr. Underwood. My new firm, Arden Content Group, is seeking research in the Midwest markets. When I saw that my trip would take me through your city – I had to stop. To see if I remembered anything.

Jonah thought he had hidden it all from me, but he underestimated my skill with technology. I know my way around a hard drive. Those emails he thought he deleted – they were in his sent folder. A genius, my ex is not. A talented artist, yes, but his lack of business savvy will be his downfall.

Like I said - I’m not asking you to tell me what happened. I got enough of that from his back and forth with Dr. Lake. I’d had some kind of meltdown, I gathered, and at first, I thought it was from the cancer – but my physical at Arden confirmed that my body had never broken down in the first place. My mind was crumbling, infected somehow. I had gone so wrong that I needed to come across the country to find you, locked away beneath the streets. I get the feeling that you’re hiding from something too, Dr. Underwood.

Maybe I’ll ask him to draw you. As a gift. It wouldn’t hurt to see what he is up to nowadays. How would you prefer to look? I don’t see you with a sword. No. I don’t know much about that nerd stuff, but I see you as a magic wielder. A damage dealer. In those conventions of his you’d be wearing a cloak that hides half your face. And in your hands, you’d hold a tiny spark.