By Jennifer Eisenbart
EDITOR
For 13-year-old Kayla Brown, New Year’s Eve isn’t a high-profile day – she normally just hangs out with friends.
She remembers nothing from the day in 2014 – only from the day before, spending time at her friend Samantha Russell’s home after they went shopping at their favorite store.
“She was going through her Christmas gifts,” Brown said.
The next day irrevocably changed the lives of two families. With Russell driving, the girls were on their way to Lake Geneva when Russell’s pickup truck was hit by a minivan. Both girls were thrown from the truck.
Russell, 16, was severely injured and died at the scene of the crash on Highway 50 at 392 Avenue in the Town of Wheatland. Brown spent 10 days in a medically induced coma.
Everyone around her was unsure of the outcome.
Now, a year later, Brown is, by all accounts, a relatively happy seventh-grader at Wheatland School. She is on the honor roll, plays sports year-round, and is a member of the cheerleading squad. She is into selfies, as evidenced by her “This is my selfie shirt” – spelled backwards, of course, so it reads properly in photos shot into a mirror – and uses her cell phone liberally.
In less than a month, one of the most visible signs of the crash – the almost-complete amputation of her left ear – will be surgically repaired.
Not that Brown is overly concerned.
“I don’t care,” Brown said. “I can hear perfectly fine out of it.”
Looking back
As the first anniversary of the deadly crash approaches, Brown’s mother, Heidi, said she knows how lucky her daughter is.
“She’s the one-percent survivor,” Heidi Brown said. “She came out of this the same person. Everyone is just completely amazed at how well she’s doing, in every aspect.”
At about 1:15 p.m. on New Year’s Eve last year, that was far from the case. Heidi said she was just getting off work that afternoon when Russell texted her, saying she and Kayla would meet her at “Wally World” – common slang for Walmart.
“I said, ‘Perfect, I’ll meet you there,’” Heidi recalled.
Russell, who was a student at Burlington High School, had plans for the evening to attend a skating party at a local rink. Kayla was going to hang out with Russell’s sisters – all of whom were and remain close.
“It was skating,” Kayla said. “I really didn’t want to (go).”
When Heidi Brown got to Walmart, she tried texting the two girls and didn’t get an answer. Five minutes later, Samantha’s mother, Heather Russell – also a close friend – called.
“She said, ‘The girls have been in an accident. I don’t know how bad.’” Heidi recalled.
It turned out to be horrific. Neither Samantha nor Kayla was wearing a seatbelt – despite regular reminders from both their mothers – and were apparently thrown out the passenger side window.
“I drove right to the scene,” Heidi said. A member of the Wheatland Fire Department – Heidi was escorted to someone’s truck in an attempt to keep her warm on the glacially cold day.
“I just sat in the truck waiting. I hadn’t seen her. I didn’t ask any questions,” Heidi said. “We knew both girls were ejected. We knew Sam was pinned under the truck.
“No one was telling us much more than we needed to know,” she added.
Heidi didn’t go see her daughter in the ambulance. Heather Russell, meanwhile, went into the ambulance that held her daughter while they waited for Flight for Life to arrive.
Moments later, Heather emerged.
“I just remember her running and screaming that (Sam) wasn’t going to make it,” Heidi said. “I remember sitting in the truck and thinking this wasn’t real.”
‘Very critical’
Flight for Life helicopter was called for Samantha, but instead it was Kayla that was transported directly to Children’s Hospital.
The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department listed her condition as
“very critical.” Kayla was in the Intensive Care Unit, a monitor inserted in her brain to check pressure. Her breathing was controlled by a respirator. Her face was a combination of road rash and stitches – and a skull fracture loomed above all other concerns.
However, Heidi doesn’t remember a point where anyone told her Kayla would die.
“Or I just didn’t hear or understand,” Heidi said. “From what anybody told me, she was never not stable.”
Miraculously, the skull fracture was Kayla’s only broken bone. Everything else, as terrible as it appeared, was essentially superficial.
That was bad enough, though, for Heidi and her ex-husband – both of whom spent so much time at Kayla’s bedside that staff finally sent them home for 24 hours.
“They said, ‘It’s OK. Just get out of the hospital,’” Heidi recalled. The couple returned refreshed, after they ate at a local restaurant they came to frequent over Kayla’s 29-day hospital stay.
After 10 days, doctors brought Kayla out of the coma.
She almost immediately wanted to know where Samantha was and if she could see her and visit her.
“We told her Sam’s injuries were really bad and, unfortunately, she didn’t make it,” Heidi recalled.
Kayla then surprised her mother.
“She wanted to know how Heather was,” Heidi said. “I told her as soon as she was ready, Heather would come up and see her.”
While she had to use a walker for a few days, physical rehabilitation went well. Heidi said doctors told her Kayla had somehow avoided brain damage.
“(She has) no deficits,” Heidi said.
Close friends
Samantha and Kayla – despite their age difference – were by all accounts as close as sisters.
“She told me pretty much anything she wouldn’t tell anyone else,” Kayla said. “She trusted me with all of her secrets.
“She said I was like a 16-year-old in a 12-year-old’s body,” Kayla added. “She said she liked me because I wasn’t annoying. I was mature.”
Heidi said, “Sam was like the big sister. If I could’ve picked anyone to be Kayla’s big sister, I would’ve picked Sam.”
The families were so close that Kayla would often go on road trips with the Russell family. Right before the holidays last year Kayla went with the Russell family to Indiana to pick up a female Blue Heeler so it could be bred with their male dog.
In the aftermath of the crash, not much has changed.
“I’m at their house all summer, every summer,” Kayla explained. She was out there this year, helping with the Russell’s pigs, piglets, two pens of chickens – and geese.
“And those (animals) are annoying,” Kayla said. “The minute you walk past them, they honk and honk.”
This summer, she went camping with the Russell family, and continues to hang out with Samantha’s sisters.
And the female Blue Heeler that the Russells brought home before Christmas last year just had its first litter of 10 puppies Dec. 18.
“They’re so cute,” said Kayla.
The one worry Heidi had in all of this – outside of Kayla’s recovery – was losing the friendship she had with Heather Russell.
It appears those fears were unfounded.
“She calls Heather her other mother,” Heidi said of Kayla. “She’ll be as close to us now, as they were back then.
“And I think it’ll be that way forever.”
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