After 275 days and nights in a hospital, Jackie Lithgow went home.

The parade of goodbyes lasted all morning. The chef baked a farewell strawberry shortcake. Housekeepers, kitchen staff, therapists, doctors, nurses all stopped in room 442 at Magee Rehab for clenching hugs and tearful farewells.

CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Click here for more photos of Jackie's journey Jackie Lithgow sleeps in his room at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. The jersey of his favorite Flyer, Wayne Simmonds, hangs behind him.

Erin Trudell, his physical therapist, made Jackie stand up to hug her goodbye.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said.

Dan Ryan, a physician, came in with two last words, “Cole Haan,” which Jackie repeated, their little bond. When Jackie walks again the doctor wants him wearing stylish shoes.

“Jackie, I am honored to have been the one to hear your first words,” speech therapist Aimee Aranguren wrote on a goodbye blanket hanging on his wall, the last thing to come down. “You are a rock star.”

Jackie’s mother, Lisa Lithgow, also hadn’t been back to their home in Carlisle in 275 days. Jim Lithgow, Jackie’s father, had been back only three times. Either Lisa or Jim slept in Jackie’s room every night since Feb. 23.

Val Palmer, a nursing assistant, came in on her day off. “Just to see the miracle that took place here is a real blessing,” she said. “To be able to eat. To be able to speak. Each time they took a tube out was a celebration.”

CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer Jackie Lithgow in 2012, before the fight.

The goal for months was for Jackie, 19, to get home by Thanksgiving, and Tuesday he was discharged. “Goodbye room,” said Lisa, around noon, the last one out. “You’ve been good to us. We’re not going to miss you. Just the people.”

His mother, on leave from the Hershey Company, gave away 72 boxes of Pot of Gold chocolates that morning, and bracelets bearing one word: “Believe.”

Therapists Paula Bonsall and Erin Trudell, who worked with Jackie from the beginning, before either was convinced his spirit was still alive inside that injured brain, walked with the family as they wheeled Jackie out.

“Enjoy being home,” Bonsall told him.

“You can’t imagine,” Jackie replied.

His father hugged Bonsall one last time. Jim’s eyes were rimmed in red from so many tears. “Thanks for everything. You are awesome, an awesome person.”

Jackie was strapped in the front seat, window down. With his right hand, his good hand, he gave the V sign for victory as, finally, the family Honda rolled away.

Jim and Lisa, 54 and 53, fell in love at Bloomsburg University. When their son enrolled last year, he wanted to pledge his dad’s fraternity, Zeta Psi.

On Feb. 22, he received an invitation to join, and that night went to a party at a fraternity brother’s off-campus apartment. At 1 a.m. four football players from Kutztown University showed up and tried to force their way inside.

“To be able to eat. To be able to speak. Each time they took a tube out was a celebration.” Val Palmer, nursing assistant

A fight ensued and spilled onto the street, according to police and witnesses. Another freshman and friend of Jackie’s, Donald Hoover, was punched in the head by one of the Kutztown players, then kicked repeatedly on the ground.

“During Hoover’s assault,” the police report states, “Jackie Lithgow was heard by several persons to ask the Kutztown males to stop fighting and leave. At this time, Angel Cruz (a 180-pound Kutztown fullback) was seen by numerous people to punch Lithgow in the head with extreme force causing him to fall backwards and strike his head on the pavement. Lithgow was seen to be bleeding excessively from the back of his head and did not regain consciousness.”

When Jim and Lisa, en route from Carlisle, nearly 100 miles south, reached the ER doctor from their car around 3 a.m., his first words were, “How far away are you?”

Physicians at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville had to remove the top of Jackie’s skull to make room for his swelling brain. Then he got a blood clot in his jugular vein. After weeks at Geisinger, Jackie came to Magee in Philadelphia – but wasn’t there 12 hours before a brewing infection in his brain, the antibiotic-resistant MRSA, sent him to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for 44 days and removal once again of a piece of his cranium.

He also got meningitis.

“Here's a young man with a future full of promise, and was acting as a peacemaker, and he was struck with a single blow that has completely changed his life,” said Columbia County District Attorney Thomas Leipold. “And on the other side of the coin, for the defendant, he struck a single blow, and I'm certain did not foresee or anticipate how bad the result of that could be. And unfortunately, that just goes to show what the intersection of alcohol and ego and attitude can do, it can just produce absolutely tragic results for everyone involved.”

On Nov. 10, Cruz pleaded guilty to assault. In custody since his arrest, he has been advised not to comment until his sentencing Dec. 5.

"We all thought his day would come to tell the world his story," Cruz's aunt, Melissa Lopez, emailed from Florida, "but only after he made it to the NFL and became a role model to the youth that have walked his path. It is tragic that we must tell his story like this. ... He struggles every day with what happened to Jackie."

Jim and Lisa haven’t taken a moment yet, truly, to process how much their own lives have changed. They have been consumed with keeping Jackie alive, and helping him get better.

“There’s a ton of emotions on hold,” said Lisa. “If I would go down the path of Why? Why my kid?, Jim would bring me back. ‘Lisa, you can’t change it. Lisa, that’s just a waste of energy.’ ”

Her outlook now is clear: “Jackie easily could have died,” Lisa said. “Instead of damning God, I’m thanking him.”

Jackie has no recollection of the accident. One night Lisa did told him what happened. “I don’t understand why someone would do this to another person,” he told his mother. And cried and cried.

When Jackie started at shooting guard for the Boiling Springs Bubblers his senior year of high school, he was 5-9 and 130 pounds. In the hospital, his weight fell below 100. He couldn’t speak, stand, swallow, sit up. Every part of his brain was injured. Brian Kucer, the doctor in charge of brain injury programs at Magee, believes that Jackie’s brain sustained multiple blows. Lisa wonders if he was kicked on the ground like the other boy.