"I love you, Mom."
Those were 19-year-old Tiffany Delaney's first intelligible words in 10 months, after she was left unconscious in a traffic accident on Jan. 27, 1989. With her life hanging in the balance, Tiffany's family had sat at her bedside for nearly a year, praying constantly for her recovery."We're believers in faith," said Larry Delaney, Tiffany's father and a former Sunday School president. "When I got to the hospital after the accidentT, my father-in-law and brother-in-law and I administered to her. She wasn't expected to live, but we felt prompted that she would get better."
When Tiffany slowly came out of the coma after five months, and then gradually began moving her lips to try to speak, the simple words of love were, said her mother, Pam, a long-awaited reward.
Members of the Woodland Hills Ward (Los Angeles California Canoga Park Stake) when the accident occurred, the Delaneys and their four children were living with Sister Delaney's parents while their new home in the Antelope Valley community of Quartz Hill was being built.
Although the family had only attended the ward about eight times, the girls in the Young Women class of Tiffany's sister donated all the proceeds of a fund-raising effort to her.
"We have a real testimony of service," said a grateful Delaney. "Members have supported us continually, and it's taken that to get us through this."
Delaney said that despite the great difficulties, "We don't ever say, `Why did this happen to me?' We have a strong conviction of the gospel, and we know it's part of Heavenly Father's program. The man that injured her had his free agency.
"We'll be blessed for what we're going through," he continued. "People grow stronger because of ordeals."
A 20-year Los Angeles Fire Department veteran, Delaney would have been one of the firefighters on the crash scene if he had been on shift that day. Tiffany was on her way to visit friends and to give her 13-year-old sister, Sabrina, a ride to a junior high school dance when a pickup truck smashed into her car head-on.
The driver of the pickup was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, but he failed to appear in court and has been listed a fugitive ever since, according to the Los Angeles police department.
Sabrina had both legs and arms broken in several places, and suffered a ruptured spleen. She spent eight weeks in the hospital, and has continued to make a swift recovery. Tiffany, since coming home to Quartz Hill the week before Christmas, has steadily made progress.
"When she was in the hospital," said her father, "we'd squeeze her hand and she'd squeeze back. Now she's standing, and has walked the whole distance of the 30-foot (rehabilitation) ramp with some assistance. And she now has some movement on the left side of her body, whereas before she was paralyzed. She was never expected to recover at all - she's beating the odds."
Her speech and vocabulary have picked up, and her memory is improving, he added - recently, Tiffany gave the blessing on the food, "and for her to remember a whole prayer is very exciting."
But she's still "very childlike and innocent."
"She's always telling us how much she loves us; she's such a special spirit, so loving and childlike," Delaney said. "We're very blessed to have her with us.
"Without the gospel, without the big picture," he concluded, "I wonder how other people can deal with something like this. We just realize it's a part of life, and we know we have to do what we have to do."