'It's Like Getting My Son Back All Over Again'

SEATTLE - On May 24, as police measured the distance an 11-year-old boy was hit and thrown by a small red car speeding through a Wallingford crosswalk, all we knew about Dominick May-Douglass was the impact his body had left in the car's shattered windshield.

We learned later that he very nearly died and spent weeks in a coma.

But at about the time doctors told his mom Dominick's recovery was stalled and the improvement of his condition very much in doubt..."All of a sudden he woke up. He started talking," Desiree Douglass told us seated next to her now 12-year-old son on the rehab floor of Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center.

Seven weeks since the accident, Dom is talking, reading, and writing. He wanders the hospital floors with the help of his mom and the help of a walker.

Now out of a full-leg cast, he strengthens his formerly shattered left leg with a pedal-powered cart driven down those same hallways. Working with a physical therapist, and armed with a purple and white Washington Husky Sweet-16 basketball signed by the players of the 2005 team, the former gym rat takes aim at a plastic hoop and rarely misses.

"Beautiful job, my friend," his nurse celebrated with Dominick as the two exchanged a high five.

"It's like getting my son back all over again," said Desiree. "It really is."

"Well, I got hit by a car in a crosswalk," Dominick told us in speech slowed somewhat by the brain injury. "The driver made a mistake."

But his sense of humor has already returned full strength. He had a blue full-leg cast removed about a week ago. During our interview he grabbed the cast, slipped it over his right arm, and all for the sake of a laugh, pretended a big blue leg was now growing from his right shoulder.

"Oh no! Not another broken bone," Desiree joked while Dominick smiled broadly and let out the hearty laugh his mom has waited all these seven weeks to hear.

On that first night at Harborview Medical Center -- when Dominick's fate was very much in doubt -- Desiree says she prayed and made her son a promise.

"I begged Dom to come back. And I just said 'honey don't come back because it would break my heart if you didn't. Come back because we'll make a world that's worth coming back to.' I prayed that we'd have him with us and that he'd be living to his fullest and having a great life."

So, in his hospital room, which he hopes to leave behind for good in about four more weeks, he's surrounded by get well cards and hundreds of paper cranes made by his friends. It's where he and his mom are waging their battle together to get home and get back what the accident took away.

The driver who hit Dominick in that crosswalk has visited him at the hospital and apologized. Desiree says she's forgiven him.

"It takes a lot of character to face a mistake, and apologize," she said. "Our lives are forever connected."

Dominick's full recovery isn't guaranteed but his will to get better is never in doubt. His mom says he's surprising his doctors every day and pushing them to move up to each and every next round of treatment. He even plans to return to Hamilton Middle School in the fall.

And every now and then, from his hospital room you can hear Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World." It's Dominick's favorite song. Desiree created a Power Point slide show to go with it that runs through photos showing Dominick's rapid improvement.

"It's like a journey with an unknown destination," said Desiree. "You just give it everything you got."

It's a journey they're thankful paramedics, nurses, doctors, and luck gave them the chance to take.

Donations to help Dominick with medical bills can be made in his name at Washington Mutual. You can find more information about him in an online journal his mom is keeping.