The question of money looms, a terrible shadow in the background.

Souza’s treatment has already cost more than $800,000. Insurance paid for her medical care and hospital treatment, but she and her family have depended on the snow sports federation and the Brazil Olympic Committee to cover their considerable out-of-pocket expenses.

A fund-raising campaign in Brazil raised more than $115,000, with additional donations of medical and mobility equipment. Souza is figuring out her future. She is negotiating to be an ambassador for the Miami Project, Green’s organization, and looking to work as a motivational speaker and campaigner for disabled people, and possibly as a gymnastics commentator — she is not yet sure. There are many possibilities, but everything still feels provisional and uncertain.

Souza’s condition is big news in Brazil, her accident and its aftermath covered extensively in newspapers and on television. People who had never heard of her when she was a gymnastics champion have heard of her now. In Miami in September, the Brazilian soccer star Marcelo gave Souza his shirt after an international friendly match. In January, the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, approved a special law granting her a lifetime pension.

That means Souza is to receive the maximum allowed by law: 4,663.75 reais, or about $1,786, per month. It is a good income — about what a doctor or other professional might make in Brazil — but not enough to pay for the care she will need for the rest of her life. A spokesman for the Brazil Olympic Committee said that the snow sports federation planned to pay her an additional monthly sum roughly equal to that.

Souza still wears a smile on her face, at least most of the time, at least when she is in public. She tries not to think about her old self, but she cannot help it. It feels so close yet so out of reach, as if a flimsy curtain is all that separates one life from the other.

She misses the little things, mostly. “I want to pass my hand through my hair, to feel my hand on my face, to take a shower,” she said. She recently got a tattoo on her arm: a person in a wheelchair standing up and gradually walking away.

When she dreams at night, she said, she never dreams of skiing. She dreams of gymnastics.