Wings of a Bird

Accident Took Woman's Sight, but Not Her Vision
She should be unable to talk, should be a vegetable, should be dead.
That is what some people thought would be the case after a piece of unsecured furniture flew off a vehicle, pierced the windshield of her Jeep and obliterated her face into dozens of pieces of bone.
...
She is permanently blind. The 2-by-6-foot wood board obliterated her optical nerve. Had the particleboard, which struck her across the eyes and nose, hit her any higher or lower she probably would have been killed.
Maria defied the odds from her first hours in the emergency room. Doctors told her mother to prepare to bury her even as they were readying to remove her organs for donation. In a fateful moment, Maria twitched. She just wasn't ready to go yet.
Doctors feared her injured brain would make it impossible for her to understand words or ideas. Maria quickly hurdled those expectations, murmuring "mom" and squeezing hands on command.
These days, even when she tells off-color jokes, a visitor's jaw drops at how lucid, verbose and articulate Maria is, though she still struggles with short-term memory loss.
Doctors thought Maria would be confined to the hospital for a long time. Someone forgot to tell that to Maria. ...