It was one of those late spring days that announced to the world with sunny blue skies and early-morning cool that a fantastic weekend lay ahead.  Time to slough off the baggage of winter, it said, and look forward to summer!  Bette smiled as she saw a shaft of sunlight break through the wispy curtains barely covering the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of their bedroom on the upper floor of their Upper East side Manhattan duplex.

The sunbeam slanted across Tina’s bare back, casting her curves in shadows in parts, and highlighting her cool cream skin in others.  Bette reluctantly turned away from Tina, naked and sleeping face down on the bed, to walk over to the floor-to-ceiling west-facing bank of glass window panes that overlooked the eastern side of the Park, the lovely green expanse of which lay several blocks away.  She saw clouds were quickly gathering over the park, portending a dose of steady rain forecasted to fall at some point this holiday weekend, would indeed arrive later in the day.

Still, Bette mused, as she turned from the west-facing windows to glance back again on the bed, an irrepressible sunbeam had broken through, shooting past a gap in the bulbous white clouds, and straight through the solitary east-facing window, before arriving on the rumpled sheets of their bed, caressing Tina’s bare back.

Thus far, the mostly sunny days of May had been just what the doctor had ordered, as far as the city was concerned, after an inexplicably long and harsh winter.  For Bette, the April and May days when the sun shone hot during the day and the wind blew cold in the shade were as much as she could hope for, too, given the unpredictable weather patterns so far this year, as she recuperated from injuries suffered during a brutal accident in early April.  The accident pitted the armored Hummer she’d been riding on against the whiplash action of a semi that had barreled into the armored van that had been driving ahead of them, crushing it.

She’d suffered deep tissue bruising all over her body, a concussion, and a long gash across her scalp that had required over 30 stitches to close – and the stress and trauma of all these had nearly triggered a heart attack.  In fact, if not for the quick action of doctors on her arrival at the ER, along with Brom and others in the Hummer who had survived the accident with her, to ice her down, accompanied by other measures to control inflammation, possible internal bleeding, and other complications, that heart attack may well have been triggered.  And who knows what would have happened, then.