The sun had just risen when Bernadette Karna, dressed in her American Airlines uniform, set out on her commute: a taxi from her Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan to 41st Street and Lexington Avenue, then a shuttle to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Traffic was sparse that morning in June 2016, and she arrived in Midtown with enough time to grab coffee before boarding the 6 a.m. shuttle. As she crossed Third Avenue, a white S.U.V. suddenly slammed into Ms. Karna, dragging her and her suitcase 50 feet up Third Avenue.
Then the driver sped away, leaving her lying in the street.
“I didn’t see it, I didn’t hear it, I didn’t sense it,” Ms. Karna, 52, recently recalled. “It just knocked me out.”
As she slipped in and out of consciousness, an ambulance rushed her to Bellevue Hospital Center, where doctors cut off her uniform and put a tube in her chest to help her breathe. The impact broke four ribs on her left side and crushed her right side so badly she would need metal plates and screws to rebuild it. She had fractures in her right foot, left knee and back. A hole in her right foot would take six months to close.
