Liam Shay should not be sitting in an armchair in the lounge of his family's home, cracking jokes and flashing a smile that lights up the room.



The Australian teenager died six months ago, in a New Zealand forest, The Border Mail reports.



But he is here, listening to parents Paul and Patsy recount in their home in Wodonga, Victoria, the day their teenage son collapsed and stopped breathing on a family holiday.



Liam remembers nothing of the collapse.



Nor does he recall the miracles which brought him back after his heart went into arrhythmia, leading to a massive cardiac arrest.



It was April 19 in Hanmer Springs, north of Christchurch, and Liam was 15.



After heading out for a heritage forest walk, the Shay parents let Liam go on alone while they returned to their accommodation, setting a pre-arranged time for his return.



"He bounded off into the forest, large as life, his chest puffed out and he was fine," Paul says.



The couple say that no long after they saw an ambulance race down the town's main street and thought "someone's in trouble" and their other son, Jamon, thought the same thing when an air ambulance flew overhead a little later on. They had no idea that someone was Liam.



When Liam failed to show, they went looking for him and but it was only when they managed to talk to the town's policeman they discovered Liam had been flown to hospital.



"He just sort of said, 'I'm sorry to tell you but your son collapsed in the forest this afternoon and he was airlifted to Christchurch hospital.



"He said Liam was breathing at the time he was airlifted ... that's all he could tell us.



"We were told it was pretty bad. They said, 'just go in there and be with him'," Paul said.



"They didn't know what was going on at that stage. It was a terrible night.



"Essentially ... he collapsed in the middle of the forest on his own.



"And this is where the miracles started to kick in for us."



James, a young English backpacker working in Hanmer Springs had been given the afternoon off, deciding on a walk only to return for his mobile phone in a decision that would save Liam's life.



James initially headed down a track called "Alligator Alley" but before long, thought, "there are no alligators in New Zealand" and returned to the original path.



"Thank God he did because when he turned around and went back, there was Liam on the ground," Paul said.



"Being in the clearing, he was able to get reception on his phone.



"Liam stopped breathing while James was on the phone to the emergency services."



The Shays later learnt that James' career in England had involved organising CPR courses and that every now and then, he'd done one himself.



"He told us later it all came flooding back to him," Paul said.



"James was stuck in that forest, alone, working on our son for 25 minutes, with no help, just pumping away and obviously doing an excellent job to keep our son alive."



When James came across Liam, the teenager's heart was in the first stage of an arrhythmia called ventricula fibrillation.



With the Westpac rescue helicopter enroute, the medical centre at Hanmer Springs was notified but the doctor had a broken arm and unable to provide the necessary medical procedure.



In another "miracle", the doctor's husband, a St John's ambulance person, was visiting from Christchurch on his day off.



"We were just so lucky that he was there because his wife wouldn't have been able to do anything.



"He had several attempts to intubate (inserting a tube into the trachea for ventilation) him, he got it on the fourth time. But they still couldn't get his heart going so they had to paddle him four times."



Liam had only the faintest of pulses when the rescue copter arrived.



"We were told that they were going to call it," Patsy says.



"Then one of the paramedics felt the faintest of pulses in his neck and he said, 'I've got something'. So they took him.



The family were told Liam was without oxygen for between 45 and 60 minutes and brain damage began after about six to eight minutes.



Doctors put Liam "on ice" in a plastic blanket to keep his temperature down for 24 hours to limit damage to the brain.



"It just shuts down his body, and he was drugged to be in a coma."



Three days later they were told by hospital staff "to prepare for the worst-case scenario."



"Originally they said that in a best-case scenario, he would wake up and everything would be fine.



"Worst case, he will wake up and within 12 months be a capable person where someone meeting him for the first time wouldn't notice anything different but someone who knew him before might.



"So we were clinging to that.



"But on the Friday they told us the best-case scenario was off the table. Best-case scenario now was that within 12 months he might be back to where he was. Worst case was that we were not going to get our son back, that he was not going to wake up.



"We were stuck in Christchurch, in a city that was shaking.



"We booked the holiday before the earthquake but when it happened we thought, 'well, we're not going to be in Christchurch any more than one night'.



The family were told that the best thing the hospital could do for them was to get them home.



The first signs that Liam might, in fact recover, came on May 3 on his trip back to Melbourne.



Patsy was by Liam's side on a CareFlight with two pilots, a doctor and a nurse.



"He was on a stretcher, paralysed and drugged to the hilt. But then we saw this movement ... he stretched," Patsy said.



"The doctor said it was definitely an independent movement as opposed to a seizure or something like that.



"It was as if we got into Australian airspace and Liam decided it was time to come back to us."



In Melbourne, the Shays were initially given the same story they had heard in Christchurch but it was at this point Liam began to prove the doctors wrong.



"They started to do different things with him, he started to improve," Patsy said.



"I got a smile from him on Mother's Day."



After 14 days in the intensive care unit, Liam had shown enough positive signs to be transferred to an adolescent ward, and rehabilitation.



"I think it was really their first acknowledgment that this kid might do something," Paul said.



"And that's where we can say that Liam took over. His positiveness and his strength, that's where the miracles stopped and the strength that is Liam took over.



"I was down there for my birthday, on May 14, and I walked in to his room and Liam had ripped his tracheotomy out.



"They had decided he was doing OK and not to put it back in.



"And I said to him, 'Liam, it's my birthday today', and the first thing he said to me since he'd got back, he just mouthed it because he had no real voice, was 'happy birthday'.



"It was beautiful, I bawled my eyes out."



It was a long and difficult road as Liam faced the prospect of learning to walk and talk again.



He had wasted away, losing 13 kilograms to weigh just 60 kilograms.



But Liam was fuelled by a burning desire. He wanted to go home.



"When we would be leaving the hospital we would ask him if he wanted anything and he would say, 'yes, a train ticket'," Patsy recalls.



"It was his fight, his determination," Paul said.



Liam set a goal to return to Wodonga by August 31. Patsy made a calendar, and they marked off each day as it passed.



Medical staff told them it was good to have a goal, but not to be too disappointed if it wasn't realised.



Liam, and his family, never had any doubt that it would be. He had been defying expectations all along and he continues to do so.



He has returned to his English class at Wodonga Catholic College as well as volunteer work once a week.



"Because of the brain injury Liam has sustained, for a time he is going to tire a lot faster than anyone else," Paul said.



"His brain is essentially rewiring around the damaged parts. It just means that it is having to work a hell of a lot harder than our brains to interpret and decipher the same amount of information."



But Liam is like any other impatient teenager and just wants to get on with it.



"People ask what I was like before it happened ... I don't get it," Liam says.



"I was exactly like I am now.



"It's a bit of a pain but hey, I could be way worse.



"I met tons of kids in that hospital and if I compare myself to some of them ... I can still walk, I am still here."



The Shay family thank God for that. They know fate was on their side the day Liam had his attack.

-The Border Mail