As I walked down the sterile hallway of the hospital, I thought to the terrible day earlier that week, when I found out the reason why I was then walking into the Children's Intensive Care Unit.

Several days earlier, I was sitting on the soft fabric that makes up my couch, which sits against the wall that resembles a hazelnut color. It was a normal Monday in July, and I was spending the day at my father's house. When my phone started violently vibrating, sounding muffled by the pillow I stuffed it under, and when the familiar name of ‘Mom’ showed on the caller ID, no worry crossed my mind. My mother will call on a regular basis on the days we don't spend with her, so I instinctively thought she was just checking up on my younger brother and me. Once I answered, I didn't have time to say our regular hellos before she started telling me what happened. At first I was shocked and I didn't know what to do. I grabbed the closest pillow and held onto it because I needed to squeeze something to help calm my nerves. It was all because she spoke the words “Jack is being rushed into surgery in Syracuse. He was in a terrible accident and was airlifted.”

As I walked closer to my cousin’s room, I told myself that he was okay and would be okay in the end. I didn’t remind myself of what my mother told me about the way his head was misshapen due to his traumatic brain injury, the way he had a tube stuffed down his throat that is the reason he was currently breathing, or all the wires connecting him to machines that only doctors and nurses understand. I never liked hospitals and I still don’t. I was feeling nauseous as I turned the corner after my mother, who knew her way to his room.

Before I could process what I saw, I broke down into tears and refused to go into his room. I didn’t even look through the crystal clear glass wall and door that allowed the nurses to be able to see him at all times. When I finally looked at him and saw his head bandaged in the rough, white colored cloth that was holding the side of his head due to the part of his skull they removed, I almost lost it. Standing next to me in hospital scrubs were a few his nurses. They were telling me that I shouldn’t be scared, he was just in a medically induced coma with a tube that was helping him breathe. Then when my aunt saw me, she came over to help me calm down. She told me he was okay, and earlier in the day he moved his hand which was a good sign because the extent of his brain injury could cause him to become paralyzed. I finally felt ready to enter his room. Once I got closer, I had to really look at his face to see the Jack I know.

I eventually sat down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs they had in the room and looked to the wall next to me. Hung across the wall I saw pictures of Jack; some were more recent ones that were action shots of him playing basketball, one from his most recent prom the prior year, and then there were several pictures when he was younger that my dad had taken on his camera. As I looked and admired the pictures, I listened to my aunt explain to me that she hung up the pictures so the nurses knew what Jack looked like. It registered in my head that the nurses didn’t know what he looked like due to the extent of his brain injury. Sitting in the sterile room, hearing the faint mechanical beep in the background that indicated a heartbeat, and soaking in everything that happen, I knew we were hoping for a miracle to happen, which is exactly what happened.

His accident occurred on the 27th of July in 2015, and it has been over a year. Since then, he has gone through rehab and therapy to help him to get to where he is now. If you saw him now, you wouldn’t be able to tell that he was in the hospital for around a month or so, you would think he’s a normal eighteen-year-old living his life.  We knew it was a miracle when the nurses called him the ‘miracle child’. We now believe that even when the worst events occur, miracles can happen.