The Awakening

She lay in a coma for six weeks, stitches mounting her shaved head like stitches on a softball. Her eyes were bruised, tubes were in her nose and blood was on her pillow. You wouldn't recognize the girl with the Farrah Fawcett haircut.

Her mother, Betsy, moved into an apartment to be close to her. She spent days sitting with Sarah, holding up Sarah's head. "Before she opened her eyes, she didn't move a muscle, except to yawn," says Betsy. "When she opened her eyes, there was a blank stare for three months."

By the time Sarah was moved to a nursing home, on April 11, 1985, a physical therapist wrote in her discharge summary: "Patient is awake and alert. She reacts to painful stimuli. No consistent communication has been established, although we have worked on an eye-blink system: one blink-yes, two blinks-no."

Doug, during his six months in jail, wrote, in big loopy cursive: "Mr& Mrs Scantlin, How is Sara, I live everyday with her continuously in my thoughts and prayers. I'm in Jail it is bad. . . . It is going to take time, but I would like to help Sara make her come-back, she will and if you will let me, please. I love you both Doug."

Sarah's eyes dart to her dad's. She tries to raise her head, which seems almost fused to her right shoulder after so many years of clinging.

"Sarah wants to run away," Dad says.

"Good for you, Sarah. Leave us a note. Send us a postcard."

When Sarah arrived at Golden Plains HealthCare Center in Hutchinson, she was on a feeding tube. Therapists began working to teach her to swallow. They taught her how to use her eyes to talk. Sometimes she could blink yes or no or indicate responses by looking at cards: "Is your name Sarah or Bob?" "Is your mother's name Betsy or Sally?" Sometimes there was nothing.

As Sarah worked, her parents had to pick up pieces of their lives.

The grief was exhausting. "It was kind of like going into a room where there are no windows. It is dark. There is no clock. No lights," Betsy says. "Then all of a sudden you say, 'I can't stay here the rest of my life. I have to come out of there.' And you go back outside and there is light and people and their life has gone on and yours has stood still."

In 1986, James and Betsy sold all their worldly possessions, bought an RV trailer and moved to Albuquerque, where James worked as a substitute teacher and Betsy "did nothing, just lollygagging around." The next year, Betsy had a dream about Sarah.

"She was walking toward me and she said, 'Hi, Mom!' That was about the same time I said, 'I have to go back to Kansas.' . . . I brought her into this world and I'm going to see her out."