TACOMA, Wash. - On this night in 2008, a young woman and her unborn child were on the edge of death at Hanover's Intensive Care Unit.
Twenty-eight-year-old Lisa Case was crossing busy E. Main Avenue in Puyallup. Lisa was in front pushing a stroller with one daughter, followed by her other daughter and Lisa's boyfriend Nathan Bonell.
"Just taking a blink of my eye and seeing a light in the corner of my eye," remembers Bonell, "then seeing her laying on the ground."
Bonell recalls Lisa pushing her daughter to safety before being struck by a man police say was driving drunk.
Lisa Case was badly injured, her brain swollen and bleeding, her pelvis crushed, her legs broken. But paramedics had more than that to worry about when Bonell informed them Lisa was five months pregnant.
She was airlifted to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center where the trauma team went to work and the Case's family and friends gathered to wait for news.
"When I saw her Monday night it horrified me," said Case's mother that night in December.
Bonell couldn't forget the image of his wife's pregnant and mangled body on the ground. The family spent New Year's Eve 2008 preparing for life without Lisa and never getting to know her baby.
Now, the family is spending New Years Eve 2009 enjoying a constantly smiling and giggling 8-month-old boy named Kaleb.
"We're very happy to be here," said a broadly smiling Lisa Case who is now Lisa Bonell after marrying Nathan.
Lisa's brain is back to normal, and she is slowly and painfully regaining her ability to walk. The man who hit her has been tried and sentenced.
2010 is beginning with a much brighter outlook than 2009.
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