SHE WATCHED HIM from her living room window, as she always did. From six floors up, her son was no larger than a fingernail, and as he made his way across the parking lot of her retirement community, she saw how he was favoring his left leg.

"Ah-ee-goo," Beverly Kim said.

It was an expression she used to hear back home in Korea, a common phrase old women would utter in reaction to misfortune. Even someone who didn't know a lick of Korean would understand what was meant by those words when they heard the heavy sigh weighing down the first syllable.