A Living Miracle

A 2017 CAR CRASH LEFT JENNIFER FLEWELLEN UNCONSCIOUS AND UNRESPONSIVE, WITH HER FAMILY DESPERATE FOR HER RECOVERY. NOW SHE'S BACK-AND REBUILDING HER LIFE

- SUSAN YOUNG 

For nearly five years, Jennifer Flewellen lay in her hospital bed, silent and comatose, with her mother, Peggy Means, faithfully sitting nearby. Peggy would sing, talk and read books aloud, desperately wishing that Jennifer would respond. Even though doctors said the Niles, Mich., mother of three would probably never wake up from the coma caused by head injuries she sustained in a car crash, "something just told me," says Peggy, 60, "this was what I've got to do."

Then, in August 2022, the seemingly impossible happened: As Peggy told her daughter a joke ("My boyfriend said, 'I'm losing my butt, but it's growing out front""), Jennifer began to chuckle. "I was in awe," Peggy recalls. "Then it was like, 'Get the phone!"" Giddy over hearing her outgoing daughter's laugh for the first time in half a decade, Peggy recorded video of the moment. "It was beyond words."