A twist of fate

Four weeks, two days after the crash: Friday, May 26

(Lisa Van Ryn blog)

A few people have asked if Laura opens her eyes a lot and if she recognizes people. She does open her eyes quite a bit now, but it's tough to tell sometimes what she's focusing on. When we ask her if she sees something, she will usually nod her head to respond … As far as recognizing us... We think that sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn't.

It was a month now since Laura Van Ryn had suffered a serious brain injury in a high-speed freeway collision that killed five other people. Her broken bones were healing. Her face was back to normal. With her family constantly at her side, Laura had slowy awakened from a coma, and now she was undergoing intensive therapy to rebuild her mental and physical powers. She had to re-learn how to walk and how to talk. And as her speech slowly improved, she started saying some things that were strange.

Matt Lauer: And I think it was about this time that she looked at you one time and she called you Carly.

Lisa Van Ryn: She also called me April. And she called me one other name. And maybe she called me Lisa too. She had several names. And we just thought that she was very confused and maybe she had had a nurse by the name of April or something was why she said that to me.

Laura also called her boyfriend, Aryn, "Hunter" -- and told him to lie down.

But it's not unusual for brain injury patients to call people by the wrong name or even to misidentify themselves. And besides, Laura was showing many signs of regaining her memory and her identity.

Matt Lauer: So here you're showing your daughter a picture of her roommates and she knows every one of their names.

Lisa Van Ryn: Yes.

Don Van Ryn: She did. I said, "Great, Laura. Good job." Yeah. Amazing. And there were other things she did that were very Laura-like. You know?

Matt Lauer: Like what?

Don Van Ryn: The leg was shaking. And she -- Laura would always shake her leg. And she was strong. Had strong legs. Laura had those soccer legs. We would say stuff, "Oh, you know, that's -- that's Laura right there."

Susie Van Ryn: That's so Laura. She's slowly coming back to you as Laura. Those little things. You know for us it was like, "Oh, that's so Laura."

Matt Lauer: Did you ask her her name? Did you ever ask her, "Can you say your name?"

Susie Van Ryn: No.

Don Van Ryn: I don't think at that point.

Lisa Van Ryn: I don't remember doing that.

Don Van Ryn: No.

Matt Lauer: Let me take you to Memorial Day. May 29, 2006. You actually spent the day with friends I think? It was, I believe, might have been the first day--

Lisa Van Ryn: Yes.

Matt Lauer: -- you spent away --

Lisa Van Ryn: That's right.

Matt Lauer: --from Laura. And Don, you attended her therapy session that day.

Don Van Ryn: Correct.

Matt Lauer: And the therapist asked her to write her name. Tell me about that moment.

Don Van Ryn: She wrote, scrawled – “Whitney.”

"Whitney." She wrote, "Whitney." At first, her dad didn't give it much thought.

Don Van Ryn: We had been schooled all along by the medical personnel and the brain injury people about brain injuries and about how the neurons are firing but they aren't necessarily connecting.

Susie Van Ryn: And the therapist showed us that she had written Whitney. And, you know, she said, “Does she know a Whitney?" And I said, "Well, there was another girl in the accident."

Don Van Ryn: And my immediate thought was maybe she was sitting in the van next to Whitney just prior to the accident. And that was what was stuck in her head. And again, I didn't make a huge deal of it immediately.

But then there was another disturbing moment.

Matt Lauer: She's being wheeled back from therapy. You were there?

Don Van Ryn: I was wheeling her down the hall. Yeah. And she mumbled something.

Matt Lauer: And what'd she mumble?

Don Van Ryn: I couldn't make it out. So I leaned my head down. And after maybe the third time I understood her to be saying, "false parents."

Matt Lauer: False parents?

Don Van Ryn: With barely opening her lips. You know? And “false parents.” And I thought, "Yeah, right. You know we were with you 24-7. And taking care of you like this."

Matt Lauer: Did you tell Susie about that?

Don Van Ryn: I think I did. And maybe that helped--

Susie Van Ryn: I think so that may have also--

Don Van Ryn: --what led to your thought process.

Susie Van Ryn: Yeah. I was starting to be a little uneasy and and questioning. That was a little bit more than I could understand.

Susie's unease turned into haunting doubt that evening, when some friends joined the Van Ryns for dinner at the rehab center.

Matt Lauer: Then they saw Laura. And they had a rather strange reaction. What do you remember about that?

Don Van Ryn: Well, Aryn was wheeling Laura around in her chair and passing by the entrance to the cafeteria. And I said, "Aryn, bring Laura over here. I want to have her say hi to our friends." And so that's how they got a good close-up look at her. And they just had a strange look that passed between them on their faces. And they were somewhat quiet the rest of the evening.

That night, after a day with friends, Lisa returned to her sister's bedside. Her dad had told her about the events of the day, and now Lisa looked with fresh eyes.

Lisa Van Ryn: At that moment it was night. I was sitting with her while she was falling asleep. And just thinking, "Wow. This might not be Laura." and just looking at her and looking at her. And still not feeling 100 percent positive. So I felt uneasy on my drive home.

Lisa turned it all over in her mind: the pushed-up teeth, the too-blue eyes, the piercing that hadn't been there before, and now she had written her name as "Whitney." How could it be?

Lisa Van Ryn: I remembered that someone in Fort Wayne had given us a CD that was played at Whitney’s funeral. And I knew it had a picture of her on there … And so I went deliberately to look for that picture immediately when I got home. And I looked at it. And I noticed her teeth. And I thought back to the ICU -- when my brother and I had noticed the teeth. And I thought -- it probably took the wind out of me a little. And I thought, "That is the girl that's in the bed."

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