Two rescues

I usually have a very short stop in New York on the way to Tucson. This year there was one day of heavy rain and strong winds. I went with a friend, Martha, to the cinema - a twenty minute walk. Very quickly, the wind and rain got far worse and we were completely soaked through. Broken umbrellas were all over the place. We weren't too far from the cinema when a bus pulled over beside us. The door opened and the driver leaned out. He asked where we were going and told us to get in. Martha said she didn't have her Metro card, but he said she didn't need one on a day like this. There were no other passengers and he had been on his way back to the depot.

As he drove us to the cinema he asked me where I was from and why I was visiting, etc. Martha noticed his accent and asked where he was from. Haiti. We asked about his family, who were all okay. He said however many images you saw on the television, it couldn't convey how terrible the devastation was. His mother-in-law had found a homeless, orphaned twelve year old girl and taken her in. The driver and his wife had two kids, one who had left home and one who was just about to. They felt they had room in their life for another, so his wife was spending the day faxing copies of her passport from New York to Haiti to allow the girl to come to join them in New York, where they would be able to formally adopt her.

We wished him well and he dropped us off beside the cinema.