[b]Sunday, April 3 2022 -- Afternoon, before the Blackout
Roosevelt Island[/b]

[url=https://i.imgur.com/xboG9j1.jpg?1]The Henderson Family[/url] -- Viola and her children, Ben and Angela -- had taken the Roosevelt Island Tram to the island of the same name for a day of touristy stuff, something they often did when Viola's Husband, Terrance, an MTA driver, was covering a Sunday shift for the very nice overtime money it offered. With a combination of walking and riding on the free Roosevelt Island Red Bus, they'd taken in the Blackwell House, the Light House known by the same name, the Octogon, Four Freedoms Park, and the incredible view of Manhattan from that park and from other locations.

They'd had lunch and dinner, and timing their departure from the island perfectly, they'd intended to be on the return [i]voyage[/i] of the Tram in time to see the sun going down between the skyscrapers of Manhattan's Midtown District.

Their plans changed, suddenly, when Angela -- who had been showing signs of fatigue -- suddenly leaned away from her mother and brother and puked all over the ground. Viola thought maybe she'd just eaten too much at first, but checking the 6 year old's forehead, she found Angela burning up with a fever.

They caught a taxi to an Urgent Care a few blocks away, and after a couple of hours of waiting, Angela was seen and diagnosed with a simple case of food poisoning. The Registered Nurse treated the girl with fluids and more, and after keeping her around for another hour or so to ensure she would be fine, sent the family on their way with lollipops for the kids and a hefty bill for their mother.

They'd missed the sunset by hours, but as the Tram was still operating, they took a second taxi to the station and boarded the aerial transport. 

It left the Roosevelt Island Station at 11:10 pm.

A minute later, when the Tram car was a quarter of the way to Manhattan and over the East River, the Blackout struck. The car rocked forward, then back, then again both ways several times in ever decreasing distances until finally it settled almost perfect still in a windless night. There were varying levels of disappointment [i]and/or[/i] fear initially; the Tram Operator found his radio as dead as his Car, and without it told everyone to remain calm and that the power would certainly come back within minutes, in not seconds.

That didn't happen, of course, and soon -- just as was Beverly Harper -- the occupants of the stalled vehicle were seeing the same fiery explosions all across the Metro Area as aircraft fell to their final and tragic destinations. Regardless of how frightening they were, the crashes with their bright fire balls and thick black smoke were all at what Viola thought were safe distances from her and her children. 

Then, several minutes after the last of the explosions, one more occurred directly to the north of the Tram Car, on the Manhattan waterfront. Someone said they thought it was on the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive and might have been a crashed fuel truck maybe; someone else pointed out that the fire looked to be directly under the Rockefeller University, which Viola thought she remembered was primarily a Medical School and also had a hospital in the facility.

Over the next hours, they watched as the fire engulfed not only that building but several others around it. There was no sign of response by fire responders at all: no fire trucks, no police cruisers, no ambulances, no fireboats on the East River. The fire, left to its nature, simply ran wild.