Accident nearly killed her. Doctors said she'd never wake up. Now, she's a walking miracle.

Carinne Henderson is an eternal optimist, known for her infectious laugh. She doesn't have many bad days.

When she was a kid, a good day meant running around outside with her brothers, riding a golf cart or an ATV.

In high school, a good day was spent with friends, playing basketball at Tri-Central.

In January 2020, she scored the first points of her college basketball career, on a 3-pointer for Franklin College against Earlham. That was a good day.

Good days meant lots of talking and lots of laughter. Going out to eat with friends. Shooting hoops in the gym.

“It's her personality that sets her apart from everybody else,” Franklin College women’s basketball coach Dana Haggenjos said. “She’s a very outgoing kid. You really can't get her to stop talking.”

Then came the worst day. Now, all the good days look different.

'The call you always hoped you'd never get.'

Henderson was riding her motorcycle on June 5, 2020, when a car pulled out in front of her.  She was wearing her helmet and hit the driver’s side of the car. When first responders arrived, she wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.

Craig Henderson, Carinne’s father, was in Ohio for work when he got a call from the Tipton County sheriff.

“I got the call that you always hoped you’d never get,” Henderson said.

Carinne had suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple broken bones, a compound femur fracture and kidney damage. She was life-lined to Methodist Hospital. 

Craig and Quincy, Henderson’s mother, were greeted with a horrific sight when they saw their 19-year-old daughter for the first time after the accident.

“She was pretty beat up. She was not conscious. She was black and blue, swelled up,” Craig Henderson said through tears. “That girl had been through hell and back.”

Craig and Quincy made the trip from Sharpsville to Indianapolis every day. Because of COVID restrictions, only one of them could be in the room at a time while the other sat in the parking garage. They’d trade texts back and forth.

Carinne underwent surgeries to fix her right arm and the fracture in her hip. But two weeks after the accident, Craig and Quincy met with a team of doctors. Carinne was still largely unresponsive.

“The neurologist told us that we needed to figure out what we're going to do with her, because she was never going to wake up, and she was going to be a vegetable the rest of her life,” Craig said.

Quincy said that reality “never crossed our mind as an option.”

“We have a lot more faith than that,” Craig said. “We told the doctor, ‘This isn't all about science.’ We had an army of people praying for us, border to border.”

The next day, she wiggled her toes. That was a good day — and the beginning of a journey that now sees Carinne doing things her surgeon says “defies all medical logic.”

She keeps pushing limits

By July 3, she was off the ventilator. On July 8, she was moved from Methodist to Seton, a long-term acute care hospital. On July 10, she opened her eyes when Quincy called her full name.

A week later, Quincy told Carinne she loved her. 

“She said “Love you” back,” Quincy posted on Facebook. “I called Craig and she said “Love you” to him, too!” 

That was a good day.

More good days followed. On July 22, she ate applesauce. She went outside. She got her hair brushed. The next day, she fed herself pudding.

A few days later, she sat up in a chair for nearly three hours.

“Praise be to God!” Quincy wrote on Facebook. “Folks, this progress is nothing but a miracle.”

There were tough days. She dealt with frequent neurostorming — a stress reaction as a result of a traumatic brain injury. 

“They took her back (for a CT scan) and she kept saying ‘no no no,’ Quincy wrote on July 27. “When they were finished they asked her if she was ready to go back to mom and she said ‘mom mom mom mom’ … She is just as sweet inside as she is out. We can’t wait to see God reveal his plan for her.”

In August, she moved to the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana. By September, she was beating Craig at Uno. On Sept. 10, she went home.

In February 2021, Carinne had surgery to reconstruct her ACL and PCL. Then, she began the long process of learning to walk again.

“To be able to stand up was a monumental task, probably some did not think would ever happen,” said her surgeon, Dr. Patrick Siparsky of IU Health. “Then there were the first steps. Then there was, ‘I don't have to have two people physically holding me up.’ Now the brain is going to tell the right leg to lift up and take a step.”

On Easter Sunday of 2021, she walked with her brothers down the driveway.

“She told Craig and I how thankful she was just to be alive,” Quincy wrote on Facebook the day after Easter.

In the past year, the progress has continued. Her schedule is grueling. She does strength training, physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. She does mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and does acupuncture every three weeks. Every Sunday, a massage therapist comes over for an hour and a half.

Siparsky says the results have been truly unbelievable.

“We got to see her walking with a walker for the first time with a fair amount of freedom,” he said. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, it's impossible that we're seeing this right now from the girl who came in a wheelchair, whose parents had to deadlift her up onto the bed, to this.'"

She’s playing cards and doing crossword puzzles. She's doing sit-ups. She walks on a treadmill and rides a stationary bike.

"The other day, I got a message about her going up the stairs," Siparsky said. "If you’d told me a year ago that she was going to be walking up the stairs, I would’ve said, ‘I want to see, because it's gonna be amazing if that can happen.’ It became just another thing that she's accomplished. I stopped saying she won't be able to do stuff a long time ago."

Carinne began working with Courtney Moses Delks, a former Purdue basketball player who owns Compete Training Academy in Marion. Not long after she got home, Delks did an assessment and they started doing weight training.

“She was down on a dusty floor with the same toughness and work ethic she did as a player, but now with a goal to be able to walk again and inspire other people,” Delks said. “Every goal that I give her, she exceeds it. She’s breaking through ceilings like I’ve never seen before.”

Progress hasn’t always been linear. When Carinne and Delks first started working together, she’d scream in pain from getting into certain positions. 

“There are a lot of days with tears in our barn, where she has a breakdown,” Delks said. “In those moments, I try to get her to laugh. I’ll say, ‘Is this too hard for you?’ She’ll laugh and say, ‘I can do it.’ You challenge her and she’ll respond to it.”

During a training session in December, she worked on everything from putting on shoes to butterfly stretches to, yes, shooting baskets.

She also tells her story to other people training in the gym.

“She’s a miracle,” Delks said. “That’s for sure.”

'Putting Rin back together one body part at a time'

Siparsky says Carinne’s work ethic is the reason she has made so much progress.

“All we did was reattach parts,” he said. “The work came afterwards. It was as if she was training to be a basketball player. She works out like a professional athlete — hours a day. That's why she's getting better.”

She attended multiple Franklin College basketball games this season. She's still on the team's roster, and her teammates wore warm-up shirts with her name on the back. When they hit a 3-pointer, they'd point in her direction. In January, they presented a varsity letter and the game ball to her.

"When she wasn't able to speak or walk or do any of those things, (the thing) they were most afraid of losing from her was that personality," Haggenjos said. "She blows everyone's mind with what she's doing. Her teammates just know her as the person that she was before the accident. We try to include her in everything because she still is in our family. We're with her every step of the way."

There’s still plenty of work to be done. Carinne, now 20, says she hopes to attend school again in the fall. Who knows what’s next.

“I don't think there's any doubt that a year from now you'll see her walking into the Franklin gym to watch a ballgame by her own free will,” her dad said.

That wouldn’t surprise anyone. There are plenty more good days ahead.

“Please don’t quit praying for this girl,” Quincy wrote on Facebook in January. “The prayers are working and God is answering them in his time. We are putting Rin back together one body part at a time.”

Courtney Delks organized a GoFundMe to help the family pay for a year of Carinne's exercise training, plus equipment to aid in her recovery. You can donate by clicking here.

Follow IndyStar trending sports reporter Matthew VanTryon on Twitter @MVanTryon and email him story ideas at matthew.vantryon@indystar.com.