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Mother wishes, waits for Jessica to awake

As 9-year-old Jessica Smith lies in a coma, her mother keeps a constant vigil at her bedside.

By TAMARA EL-KHOURY
Published June 26, 2005

	[Times photos: Ted McLaren]
	Mandy McKeever watches and encourages as her daughter Jessica Smith, 9, undergoes a session with speech therapist Jessica Cosgrave, left, and physical therapist Amy Brun, right, Wednesday.
	Glenda "G.G.'' McKeever reaches out to her granddaughter, Jessica Smith, at the HealthSouth rehab facility in Largo on Wednesday. Jessica is in a coma.

At 24, fifth-generation jockey Mandy McKeever was nearly paralyzed by a fall from a spooked horse named Cole's Call.

Doctors said she might never walk again, but there was a lot of fight in the 4-foot, 11-inch woman. Eleven months later, she was back racing thoroughbreds.

Now, six years after her accident, McKeever knows, just knows, that the same fight is in her 9-year-old daughter, Jessica Smith.

McKeever, 30, of Palm Harbor spends her days talking and reading to her athletic, long-legged, strong-willed daughter. She is convinced Jessie will wake up from the coma that a car crash put her in six weeks ago. And when she does, the first thing Jessie will do is tear off the pink Converse high-tops that her mom put on her to support her ankles.

Jessie hates pink.

McKeever knows firsthand the value of family support and determination, and she senses her youngest daughter will have to fight harder than she did.

"That's why I said I'll be here as long as I have to be here," McKeever said. "My mom did the same for me."

At 5:15 p.m. May 12, McKeever and her fiance, Joe Judice, 43, were driving to Boston to work a racing circuit there. She is a racing official; he is a jockey. They had barely crossed into Virginia when McKeever's mother, Glenda "G.G." McKeever called.

G.G. said she and McKeever's two daughters had been in an accident. McKeever needed to come home.

Then the phone went dead.

McKeever tried calling her mother back. No answer. She tried again. The phone's ringing revived her mother, who had passed out.

"How bad is it?" McKeever said.

"It's pretty bad. You need to come home now."

"Well, are the girls okay?" McKeever asked.

Then she heard her mother yell to rescue workers.

"Are my grandbabies dead?"

G.G. McKeever, 55, had been on Tampa Road, turning left into their neighborhood when an oncoming Ford F-150 truck struck the passenger side of her Pontiac Grand Am.

That's where the girls were, one in the front seat and one in the back. Because the pickup was taller than the car, its front bumper smashed through the passenger side window and rolled the car door over on top of them.

A former emergency medical technician stopped and gave both girls mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Cutting the door off the car and putting the girls into two helicopter ambulances left Palm Harbor Fire Rescue workers shaken and grim.

For McKeever, the first days at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg were a blur. She raced from one daughter's bedside to the other's.

Jessica and Mercadi "Sadi" Smith, 12, were in bad shape. Both of Sadi's hips and her tailbone were broken. She had lacerations on the right side of her face, a skull fracture and facial fractures.

"When I saw Sadi, of course your heart drops when you see your baby and blood all over her face," McKeever said. "As soon as I said, "Sadi, it's Mommy,' and she opened her eyes, I knew she was going to be okay."

But Jessica didn't open her eyes for five days. Even then, her big brown eyes with thick lashes were just slits. Her injuries include a broken pelvis, skull fracture and lacerated liver. The rising fourth-grader at Lake St. George Elementary School who was always outside playing softball, basketball, anything with a ball, lay motionless.

Doctors at All Children's told McKeever every brain injury has a different timeline. If Jessica didn't wake up after a year, they said, she probably wouldn't wake up at all.

But McKeever is optimistic.

"She's like me. She has that fighting instinct," McKeever said. "We used to butt heads all the time."

Meanwhile, neighbors and friends have offered support. So far, insurance has covered the girls' medical bills, which are running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But McKeever has had to leave her job, which has put stress on the family's finances.

On Saturday, the Girl Scouts of Troop 427 held a bake sale at Westfield Shoppingtown Countryside to raise money for the family.

By early Saturday afternoon, they estimated they had raised between $600 and $1,000.

"It's been a steady flow from the start," said Tammy Dotson, one of the bake sale's organizers. "A lot of people are just dropping off checks."

After a month at All Children's, Jessica was transferred to a rehabilitation center in Largo. In Jessica's room, a white board lists the names and specialties of her therapists. Posters and cards from classmates line the room. A pile of stuffed animals wait to be held. A roll of Jessica's karate belts sits in a closet.

This is where McKeever lives now. She has a bed beside Jessie's. She bathes her and changes her diapers. She turns on Jessie's cartoons and puts in her Red Hot Chili Peppers CD. McKeever lives off cafeteria food and the hope that her daughter will get better.

She says she has seen a lot of improvement in Jessica since she came to the Largo facility two weeks ago. Her left leg constantly kicks and her eyes open a little wider now. Last week Jessica's tracheotomy tube came out.

"I cried when I saw her yawn because it's something normal," McKeever says. "When she yawned I was like, "Oh my God, my baby's coming back."'

She knows jockeys who have taken bad spills and been in a coma for months. They tell her they could hear their loved ones talking to them but were in such a comfortable place, they didn't want to come out.

"Jessie, come back from Never-Never Land," McKeever coos.

She reminds her "little monkey" that the family is going on a cruise in November for McKeever and Judice's wedding. She wants to give Jessica something to work toward, so she reminds her of the monkeys she wanted to see in Belize and the stingrays she planned to swim with in Cozumel.

G.G. McKeever says she won't drive any more with the girls in the car, but she and Sadi get a ride to see Jessica several times each week. Wednesdays are family days. Judice flies in from Boston and Sadi comes in for therapy.

Sadi, who hides her healing scars with her hair, asks her mom why she woke up and Jessie didn't. She asks when Jessie is going to wake up.

"Jessie, if you wake up I'll let you punch me," Sadi says.

McKeever says Jessica's therapists think she is trying to respond to some of their commands.

"Awesome. Good job, Jessie. I got it, that's awesome," says Jessica Cosgrave, a speech therapist trying to get Jessica to give her a high-five last week. She asks Jessica to blink, to show signs of hearing their commands.

"Hey Jess, hey. Can you open your eyes real wide so I can see them?" Cosgrave says. "Let me see the color. Mom says you have pretty brown eyes."

After the occupational, speech and physical therapists work with Jessica, she's ready for a nap.

G.G. McKeever spends Wednesday nights with Jessica so Jessica is never alone. It gives Mandy McKeever a chance to go home for a night to be with Sadi. She tries to do normal things with Sadi, but usually she's too tired to do much more than go out for dinner and rent a movie.

The next day, McKeever returns to Jessica's side, to go through the routine again.

She'll kiss Jessica and talk to her.

She'll eat whatever they serve in the cafeteria.

She'll search for signs of improvement.

She'll wait for Jessie to wake up.

[Last modified June 26, 2005, 00:34:18]