LIFE changed forever for Cheryl Koenig on a Sunday afternoon in 1997.
Then, her 12-year-old son Jonathan was a talented year 7 student attending school in Sydney, where he excelled in sport and music. In a split second, all that changed.
As he crossed a road with his mate about 100 metres from his house, a speeding driver slammed into Jonathan at high speed. The impact catapulted him 20 metres into the air before he crashed to the bitumen.
His father Robert drove past the two boys only seconds before, and when he heard the bang he knew the victim was either his son or his friend.
He raced back to find his son lying on the road with his face covered in blood, a collapsed lung, smashed femur, three shattered teeth, and skin hanging off his body.
After Jonathan's friend frantically told Mrs Koenig of her son's plight, she hurried to the scene and was also confronted by the sight of her son slumped across the bitumen like a "rag doll''.
Her little boy was dying before her eyes. "We were lucky the ambulance station was only two minutes from where we lived,'' she said.
"When I was told about what happened, I thought I would get there and find him with a broken arm or leg, but it was far worse.''
Mrs Koenig said seconds felt like hours as her son clung to life.
"At one stage, he vomited and stopped breathing. He was without air for several minutes - it was as though somebody had opened up my chest and ripped out my heart.''
Because of the seriousness of Jonathan's condition, the Koenigs were not allowed in the ambulance and followed him to the hospital in a police car.
"They told us they thought he wouldn't make it,'' Mrs Koenig said.
"Later in hospital, his doctors said his brain injury was so severe they didn't think he would get through the night.''
Mrs Koenig said she later discovered her son had been declared clinically dead, twice, while in the ambulance.
Over the next 10 days, the Koenigs maintained a bedside vigil while Jonathan was in intensive care.
"He was in a coma for six weeks.
"Even when he woke up, he didn't know who we were.''
After five months in hospital, the Koenigs took Jonathan home, but he was given little hope of a full recovery. "His doctors predicted he would most likely never be able to walk, talk or eat again.''
However, Mrs Koenig refused to accept the prognosis and set out on a relentless quest to save her son.
Jonathan started regular visits to a physiotherapist at Epworth Hospital in Richmond, which he continues to this day.
Mrs Koenig and Jonathan still stay at her father's house in Manor Lakes for a week every three months while he receives the treatment. "His first words and steps were 100 times more rewarding the second time around,'' she said.
"He's 23 now, and every day we have with him is a gift - he teaches us the real meaning of life all the time.''
Mrs Koenig's fervent hope that he would one day be well again was poignantly expressed by Jonathan's friends at the time who filled his school's prayer room with hundreds of handmade paper cranes - a symbol of hope and healing.
Drawing on Mrs Koenig's diaries from the time, the book Paper Cranes tells the story of Jonathan's extraordinary courage and the Koenig family's drive to help him defy the odds.
Eleven years later, Jonathan can walk, has just begun to run and is learning to drive. He can also ski, swim, and play tennis and the piano. He holds down four part-time jobs.
Paper Cranes is available through Exisle Publishing.
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