Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part series detailing the story of Bryan Hooyman, freshman in pre-journalism and mass communication, who is returning as a student at Iowa State after an automobile accident in November 2002. The injuries he sustained sent Hooyman into a two-month coma and months of rehabilitation.

Bryan Hooyman woke up, looked out the window beside his bed and found himself in unfamiliar surroundings.

His eyes drifted to his left and he saw his mother, Deb, sitting down on a chair and he tried to get some answers. He struggled to speak, but his voice immediately injected some life into the room.

Deb rushed over and hugged him. Nurses began pouring in from outside the room. He was in the Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo. Bryan had just said his first words since that fateful November day.

About two months earlier on November 5, 2002, Bryan was on his way to see his girlfriend, Morgan Brown, who went to the University of Northern Iowa at the time.

Fate had other plans.

Fate chose an intersection on U.S. Highway 14 north of Marshalltown. It was a Tuesday evening and Hooyman was driving a 2000 Toyota Echo.

A Ford Expedition driven by 52-year-old Karen Thatcher of Marshalltown was on its way to join the highway from Sanford Avenue.

She didn’t see the stop sign.

According to Hooyman’s account of Thatcher’s deposition, instead of attempting to stop, she tried to beat him to the intersection.

Attempts to reach Thatcher for comments were unsuccessful.

At 6:30 p.m., Officer Wesley Beane of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the accident. Bryan was unconscious and his car looked like a crumpled wad of paper.

After he was stabilized, Bryan was transferred to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. Thatcher was taken to the emergency room and later released.

At about 7 p.m., a call came to the Hooyman residence. It was election night and Deb and Joe, Bryan’s parents, were watching election coverage and almost didn’t pick up the phone.

Deb finally picked it up and screamed when she heard the news. She immediately began calling Bryan’s friends and getting ready to drive to Des Moines.

Brown was studying for a test she had the next day when the call came in.

“Morgan? Bryan has been in an accident. He was transferred to Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. He is unconscious,” Deb said.

Brown stiffened when Bryan’s mother told her the news.

“He’s been in what?”

“Call your mom; she knows where he is at,” Deb said.

“Do you want me to come over?” Brown asked.

“No, we are leaving right now,” Deb said.

Brown, now a senior in meteorology at Iowa State, said she was not sure how to react when she heard the story.

“I was really scared,” she said. “I guess I didn’t really know what to think. I guess I just kind of assumed that everything had to be okay because he was too young to die. I was just really scared because I didn’t know what had happened.”

Dennis Girsch, Bryan’s friend since 8th grade, had just arrived at his dorm room after class when his phone rang. It was Brown. Bryan had been in an accident. She was on her way to the hospital.

Girsch, now a senior in hotel and restaurant management, caught a ride from his roommate’s dad to the hospital. At about 2 a.m., Brown called Bryan’s roommate at the time, Benjamin Bryan, who is now a junior in geology.

And so, little by little, word of Bryan’s accident spread.

The doctors weren’t sure how he would be. Joe was inside with the doctors taking a look at the CAT scan.

“My dad is a radiologist,” Bryan said. “He had to read my CAT scan, and he stopped counting how many bleeds I had in my brain because he couldn’t take it anymore.”

Now, Bryan is seated at his computer desk in his apartment and is in his first semester back at Iowa State since the accident.

On that fateful Tuesday, Bryan’s trip to visit his girlfriend ended up as a journey through the shades of gray between life and death.

The ride would be bumpy.