Doctors feared the worst for Brooklyn Walker.
The 14-year-old girl had been in a coma for two days at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. A motorbike had crashed into her as she rode an electric skateboard late on April 8, bruising her brain, breaking her left knee and damaging her pelvis and ribs.
Then came the moment her dad had only hoped might happen.
Ryan Walker had left his daughter’s side for an evening to watch her brother, Landon, play in a soccer tournament on April 10. His own father, Craig, took his place next to Brooklyn. As the game wound down, a call from the hospital room came in over FaceTime.
“My dad’s showing me Brooklyn’s eyes are starting to open. And I’m like, ‘Holy crap! Holy crap!’ ” he said.
There was more.
“She takes her left hand and starts to do a thumbs-up position, really, really slow. And as she’s doing that, I look over and it was a minute with 28 seconds left on the clock, and my son sends a 40-yard cross in for the winning goal.”
“I can’t even make this up,” Ryan Walker conceded.
Months of recovery await Brooklyn, starting with surgery that will allow her to bend her broken knee. Her goal is to do more than walk. She is a champion barrel and jump racer who has been around horses her whole life. She said she is eager to return to the saddle — and the skateboard.
“I really want to do competitions again,” she said in a telephone conversation.
Dad drove 19 hours home after hearing daughter was in coma
The crash happened after 10 p.m. that Wednesday night on Pinion Drive, a street in the Palm Beach Ranchettes neighborhood just outside Wellington near Lake Worth Road and Florida’s Turnpike. The street is largely unlit at night.
Brooklyn was traveling eastbound. The motorbike, driven by a 14-year-old Wellington boy, was westbound when they crashed. He sustained minor injuries, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office did not indicate in its crash report that he is facing charges. The case remains open, a spokesperson said.
On the night it happened, Ryan Walker said he had left Brooklyn in the care of his family and was driving his son to a soccer recruiting event in Indianapolis when he received a Facebook notification about a skateboard crash in his neighborhood.
“I just pulled over immediately. I called Brooklyn five times and she didn’t answer,” he said.
“I still haven’t found out from anybody on the scene. My parents called me from the hospital. The only thing I know is my daughter is in a coma.”
The drive home to Florida took 19 hours, with his mind racing every mile. Then he got to St. Mary’s “and I just lost it when I saw her in a coma,” he said.
Goal of riding rodeo horses again driving 14-year-old’s recovery
Doctors discharged Brooklyn on April 27, and she began intensive physical therapy. She said her recovery has been going well and that the support from her older brother has been a big part of it.
“Before the accident, we had, like, the average brother-sister relationship for teenagers. We didn’t fight a lot. We just weren’t that close, but after the accident, we’re really close,” Brooklyn said during an interview after her discharge. “Now he’s been really nice and helpful.”
If there’s one thing on Brooklyn’s mind throughout all of this, it’s her two horses. Walker is a champion barrel and jump racer who began riding when she was 2.
Brooklyn rides Sawyer for barrel racing and Annie for jumping. She was supposed to compete in her first rodeo in two years the weekend of her accident.
Her goals right now? Get healthy enough to get back on the saddle and on her skateboard. The family will figure out the rest of it as she recovers.
“I want to be able to train all my horses and ride them,” Brooklyn said. “I also want to be able to skate again because that’s a big part of my life. I’ve been able to skate since I was seven. It just came naturally to me.”
Ryan Walker has set up a GoFundMe to cover the medical bills for Brooklyn’s treatment. For details, go to www.GoFundMe.com and search for “Brooklyn Walker.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Wellington teen rises from coma eager to ride horses, skateboard again
Reporting by Brian Olmo, Special to The Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
