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up. Clutching it to his chest, Alejandro watched as the paramedics worked, quickly taking her vital signs and asking a rapid barrage of questions. Within minutes, Amanda Beiler was gently lifted from the streets of Manhattan, placed on the crisp white sheet covering the gurney, and whisked away to a hospital.
    Alejandro stared after it, too aware that his cell phone was vibrating in his pocket and the officer was asking him a question. But his mind was elsewhere. This young woman, dressed in such plain clothes and with such a pure, fresh look on her face, lingered in his memory, and he found that he could think of nothing else. She was alone in Manhattan and clearly out of her element. He knew the feeling from his own days as an immigrant with his mother in Miami. And he also knew that he wasn’t going to make that appointment with Richard Gray. Only this was now by his own choice, not because of being delayed by the accident.

Chapter Two
    When Amanda awoke in the hospital room, it was dark outside. It took her a minute to place where she was. Slowly, the memories came back to her. Bits and pieces: the noise of the streets, the blinking light at the crosswalk, the noise of the screeching brakes, the impact of the car as it hit her. For a while, she relived that moment, seeing the people staring at her sprawled on the ground. Groaning, she turned her head away from the memory and stared out the dirty window by her bed.
    She could see the twinkling lights of New York City from the hospital window. It took her a moment to realize where she was; the white walls, the metal twin bed, the curtain that hung between her and the plain oak door, she took it all in. There was a large bouquet of flowers on the windowsill: pink and white roses. She frowned when she saw them and tried to count how many roses were in the tall glass vase with the pretty white bow around its neck. She stopped counting at twenty-four and left it as “a lot.” But she couldn’t begin to realize why there were “a lot” of flowers on a windowsill in a strange room that she imagined was inside a hospital.
    Amanda shut her eyes and leaned back into the pillow. There was a dull ache in her left leg, and her head felt fuzzy. She couldn’t move anything more than her eyes and even that hurt. Why was she here? she wondered as she tried to piece together the events that had led her to this hospital bed when, instead, she should be home, helping her mamm clean up the dishes from the evening meal.
    The door opened, and she saw a nurse in a white uniform walk through it. She flipped on a light switch, and Amanda blinked as her eyes adjusted. The nurse was an older woman with graying hair that was curly around her forehead and ears. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and had rosy cheeks. When she looked up and saw Amanda looking at her, the nurse smiled. “Well, look who has decided to wake up!”
    “Where am I?” Amanda asked, pulling the sheet and white blanket up to her chin. She tried to remember what had happened, but everything seemed a blur. One minute she had been crossing the street among a crowd of people, the next she was waking up in this strange room by herself. There were faint images that clouded her memory: bright lights, the man with the dark glasses, the loud noises, a police car, and all these Englischers. But she just couldn’t seem to piece it together.
    “NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, my dear. You had quite a nasty accident,” the nurse said, reaching for the chart that hung from the foot of the bed. “Let’s check you out and see how you’re doing, if it’s OK with you?”
    Amanda watched as the nurse checked her pulse. “What happened to me?”
    “Just a few bumps and bruises, dear,” the nurse said, smiling. She seemed pleasant enough, not like the other Englischers that Amanda had met on her journey. “And a broken leg. Nothing that a month in a cast won’t fix.”
    “A broken leg?” She reached down to feel her leg. Sure enough,