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so tired but not sleepy still made little sense to her.
    Staring up then, focusing on the slow hypnotic revolution of the ceiling fan, whirling, whirling, as if to lift the entire room away. Like Dorothy, cast on the winds toward Oz. It beat counting imaginary sheep.
    Alone in the bedroom on days like this, sleep could never be too quick in claiming her; days warm outside and cool in, the sun glowing brightly around the edges of the drawn blinds, and filling every crack until it became more than light, it was a luminescent presence trying to assert itself and intrude.
    And did it ever take her back.
    Three years and chump change ago, she had been a different Adrienne Rand. In fact, she'd not been Adrienne Rand at all, but Adrienne Wythe, a name now entirely foreign to her. Marriage had been, well … adequate, certainly. She recalled relishing the assurance of someone being there to come home to, and in turn to be there for someone else. In that sense her marriage was certainly secure; but then again, so are prisons, so there you are.
    Why, with all the training and fieldwork to hone those skills in pinpointing everything wrong with a stranger's life, was her own inner vision confined to hindsight? The paradox of the trade, she supposed. She and Neal never should have married; went through six months joined by love, and the rest by inertia alone. Like a pair of asteroids that never once touch, yet still hurtle through the black voids in tandem, linked by their own peculiar gravity.
    In those days even her base of home and career was different. She had been born in San Francisco, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect she would eventually die there, or at least across the bay in Oakland. In the meantime, S.F. General was apt to provide all the therapeutic and research opportunities she could want. She showed a particular flair for handling violent types, and S.F. General indulged her; there was no shortage.
    Adrienne had never put much credence in fate. Fate was just a convenient, catchall term for moments of truth when the laws of probability met in random collision, and left people to pick their way through the wreckage. And so it had happened, over a week's time, that the staff of S.F. General fell by the dozens to a nasty strain of summer flu. Long hours, lowered resistance — enter the virus, stage left, and her turn came. Simple cause and effect, but how tempting to believe the universe that day was plotting. Whether to try to crush her in disillusion, or liberate her at last, Adrienne had yet to decide. The universe was funny that way.
    No matter. In the long run, she was glad it had happened.
    She timed her commute home between bouts of wretched upheaval and pulled into the driveway in time to christen it with bile. Ahead of her was Neal's car, the Nissan sitting there alone — what's wrong with this picture? This time of day? Perhaps he had fallen victim to the same viral prankster, and she decided she'd best enter as quietly as possible. Neal ill was Neal near death, to hear him moan on about it.
    As it was, such consideration became quite unwarranted. Once in the house, Adrienne had tiptoed halfway up the stairs to the second floor and the bedroom before her ears conceded the obvious: Neal was not alone.
    They had no idea Adrienne was there, apparently no idea she could be there, ever. Their abandon was total, and for at least a full minute Adrienne watched from the hallway. Who the woman was, she didn't know, and even after she had the name days later, it was no one Adrienne had heard of. Healthy, though, and even Neal seemed possessed of a certain robust exuberance that he otherwise lacked in their own bedroom encounters. They were on their knees, the woman lowered to elbows as Neal coupled with her from behind, the both of them golden and glowing in shafts of sunlight that pierced the room through drawn blinds. They looked like an ad for vitamin E.
    My bed. That's my bed, Adrienne had thought. Perfectly