Standing in their kitchen together, Erica Wagner and her mother, Gina, are thankful they are with each other.
The two are looking at a picture of Erica taken six years ago while she laid in a hospital bed in a vegetative state.
"I just marvel at the fact," Gina said. "Then, I didn't know if she'd survive and now it's an amazing journey."
Erica's journey to recovery is one based on hope, but it's a journey that began with very little of it.
Her life changed forever in August 2013. While traveling down Interstate 77, she lost control of her car, which hit a barricade and resulted in her being partially ejected from the vehicle.
Gina Wagner remembers rushing to Akron General with her husband after hearing the news of her daughter's accident.
"We thought for sure she had died," she said.
Erica survived the crash but had extensive injuries, including a severe traumatic brain injury.
She laid in a coma for 27 days.
"With doctors shaking her and trying everything they could, she was totally unresponsive," Gina Wagner said.
Considered to be in a vegetative state, doctors and the Wagners were soon forced with an impossible decision: permanently transfer the 20-year-old to a nursing home.
With little hope of recovery, the improbable happened.
"Two days before she was supposed to be transferred, she woke up," her mother recalled.
That's where Erica's slow recovery started.
"I had to learn to breathe, eat, swallow, talk and walk," Erica said.
It's been six years since the crash. Erica's physical and cognitive health has almost been fully restored, but it wasn't until a trip to Italy this summer that her faith would be fully restored as well.
While visiting the Chapel of St. Francis of Assisi Basilica, they encountered an American priest who asked to pray over Erica.
"He put his hands upon her," Gina said. "He touched nowhere but the damaged areas of her head."
After he prayed, the priest put his hands on Erica's shoulders and blessed her. Shocked by what had happened, Erica's mom explained to the man what Erica had been through and what she had overcome.
"He stopped her mid-sentence," Erica recalled. "And said, 'I know. I was sent here for her. I've been waiting for you.'"
"As we were standing there and trying to process this, he was gone," Gina recalled.
After the encounter, Erica claims she was in a trance.
"People don't say that," Erica said. "Unless they are an angel."
Recovery based in hope and faith for the future.
"God still has a place for me in his heart."