It’s Christmas Eve at the Michels’ house, and the whole family is milling around the wide, wood-laced living room.

In the middle of the room, young Matthew digs through the couch, looking for a part of the moment’s favorite toy.

“I don’t think it’s in here,” the 9-year-old says, tossing cushions back.

His mother, Diane Michels, tells him not to worry. It’s somewhere, she says. It couldn’t have gone far.

To the family, the words themselves are comforting.

Three weeks ago, Matthew Michels couldn’t speak, locked in a coma in a hospital ward.

Miles away, in another hospital room, Diane Michels spoke only two words when her sister asked her condition:

“Dying,” she said, “dying.”

The wreck

The turn is a blind bend in the stretch of U.S. Highway 59 between Lawrence and Baldwin. After a long day of errands, all Diane Michels could think about was getting around it, to get her four children back home to north Baldwin.

Her son Caleb worked on math problems up front with mom, while Cara and Faith, her two daughters, sat buckled in the back.

Matthew Michels, 9, center, and his mother Diane, right, were two family members injured in an accident Nov. 29, when another car hit them on U.S. Highway 59 near Pleasant Grove. Diane's husband, Larry Michels, left, was not in the accident but faced the difficulty of visiting his family at different hospitals.

Matthew, worn out from a dentist’s appointment, slept in the back seat behind mom.

He swears he doesn’t remember the other car swerving into the Michels’ lane, or the sound of the two cars colliding on the driver’s side where he slept, or the kind man who stopped on the side of the road when he saw how much Matthew was bleeding after the wreck.

But to Diane, the other car was alive before them. She said she tried to swerve off the road, but the turn was too sharp.

“I slowed down. I tried to pull off,” she said. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

Moments later, she woke up, unable to move.

The pain on her left side was hot and wild. The impact of the collision broke her hip, along with three ribs and injured the organs between them.

Twelve-year-old Caleb had just come around; the passenger-side airbag had dazed him. He turned around to check on his younger siblings.

He saw Matthew in the back, still sleeping, blood draining down his face.

Suddenly, paramedics were around the car, trying to assess the scene. People yelled. Diane managed to leave the wrecked car.

Somehow, in the blinding confusion all around her, she picked up her cell phone and called her husband, Larry.

“We’ve been in a wreck,” she told him.

At the scene

Last Christmas, Larry Michels was just finishing his monthlong stay in the hospital. A month before, he suffered a string of six strokes that left him weak and his family scrambling to help their father get well again.

They were lucky, the family said. He didn’t lose his ability to walk or speak, and after months of rehab, most of his strength came back.

Late this year, Larry finally made it back to work part time in the Wal-Mart pharmacy. He was there Nov. 29 when his phone rang.

After he hung up, Larry grabbed a co-worker – he still isn’t able to drive – and the two flew down U.S. 59 toward the wreck. Both lanes of the highway were closed, and police stopped him before he could get to his family.

Confused, he asked an officer what had happened. Larry saw an ambulance driving toward Lawrence on his way to the wreck, but the officer told him that his son wasn’t in it.

He was in a helicopter, the officer said, being air-lifted to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo.

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Larry never stopped to see the condition of his car.

“We turned around and followed the ambulance,” he said. “We couldn’t follow the helicopter.”

When he arrived at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, doctors were already preparing Diane for an emergency flight to University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan.

Besides the broken bones, a CT scan showed internal bleeding, and doctors said she needed surgery.

Larry found her just after her scan. She was in pain, but her son, she thought, was alone. She wanted his father to be there with him.

“I asked him to go see Matthew,” she said.

‘Fearful thoughts’

Chantel Clock’s phone rang while she was watching TV with Levi, her husband. The oldest child of Larry and Diane was exhausted from the flu and still adjusting to her new role as a soon-to-be mom.

“I had a sick feeling in my stomach,” Chantel said of the phone call. “I had fearful thoughts going through me.”

On the phone, her aunt told her about the wreck. Without thinking, she rushed from her Lenexa home to Children’s Mercy to meet Matthew.

When she saw her little brother, she knew it was serious.

He was covered in cuts and deep gouges. His face was yellow and swollen, his eyes shut behind tight, puffy skin.

In her job as a nurse for Children’s Mercy South, she said she’s seen patients like Matthew. Brain trauma, she thought.

She began to pray for his life.

“I had fears that he might not make it,” she said.

On the flight in, Matthew fought with the paramedics, tugging on his intravenous tubes, kicking and yelling. For his own safety, the doctors used drugs to calm him.

Now, Chantel’s brother was in a drug-induced coma, breathing with a respirator, fighting for his life as his brain swelled under his matted brown hair.

She asked a doctor what might happen.

“He couldn’t promise me that things couldn’t get worse,” she said.

Chantel’s phone rang again; this time the call was from Larry. Her father heard she was there with Matthew. He asked if he should come.

“I told him that he was in a coma,” Chantel said. “He won’t know if you’re here or not.”

Larry went to KU Med to find his wife. She was obviously hurt, but after waiting for hours on the operating table, doctors made no incisions.

Her internal bleeding, organ by organ, slowly stopped.

Diane told her husband to go. She would be fine, she said. Be with our son.

For days and nights, Larry Michels sat in the room with his son, trying to stay awake while he watched him sleep.

After four days, Matthew’s swelling had gone down enough that a nurse offered to open one eye for him, so he could see his family.

She told them that if he could see them, it might help calm him down. Chantel agreed. The nurse softly propped his eye open.

The first thing Matthew saw, he said, was his father sitting by his bedside as he had since the accident.

His father held his palm out. Matthew put his hand inside of it, softly brushed his father’s palm with his fingertips.

“He wanted to hug him so bad, but he couldn’t,” Chantel said. “That was the most loving thing he could do.”

Something wrong

As days passed, both Diane and Matthew seemed better.

Matthew was off the respirator and eating well. He was starting to regain feeling in parts of his body where, after the wreck, there was none.

But across town, Diane suddenly got worse. In a panic, she called her family to the hospital.

Diane had been in pain for days, her side aching, hers stomach bloated and full. After detoxing her from her pain medication, doctors realized: Something was wrong, and they had to go in and find out what.

At the hospital before the emergency exploratory surgery, Chantel watched her mother wrench in pain. She heard her mother’s words as she told the family goodbye, maybe for the last time.

“I just felt: How much more of this?” Chantel said.

That night, Chantel and Larry sat in the hospital waiting room while Diane was in surgery. She looked over at her father, at his quiet eyes behind his silver-framed glasses.

He looked at peace.

“Mom is going to be OK, isn’t she?” she asked.

Larry smiled back.

“Oh yeah,” he said.

Back home

Last Thursday, after weeks of intensive physical therapy, Matthew Michels came home.

Doctors wanted him to stay, to undergo more therapy before he went back, but the homesickness was in many ways worse than his injuries.

Diane is home again, now without her ruptured spleen but in good spirits.

Life isn’t as easy as it was before Nov. 29. Diane uses a walker to get around the house now. She takes handfuls of pain killers and digestive aids to help get her through her days.

Matthew still goes to therapy five days a week, and uses a little red laser to help dim the scars that run along his face.

But to him, life is looking up. He’s bright-eyed and active now, running around the house with his siblings.

The red laser has become a cat toy; his three kitties go crazy for it, he says.

Even his post-wreck condition has become a joke in his mind.

“That picture was taken right after the fight,” he says, looking at a photo of him in intensive care, “but you should have seen the other guy’s knuckles.”

And, for one family, Christmas slowly begins to feel normal. The tree is packed with presents, care of school, church and other friends. And, for the first time in two years, the whole crew is back together.

Which is, to Matthew Michels, the real gift today.

“It’s the biggest one, and the best one,” he says.