For Bethany Benson, 22, it should have been an uneventful drive back from her aunt’s house in Michigan to her own in Oshawa. It was August 2, 2010, around 5 p.m. With her boyfriend at the time behind the wheel, they crossed the border and she decided to stretch out as best she could in the confines of her mom’s 2002 Sunfire. She reclined the seat a little and propped her feet up on the dashboard, soon sleeping as the farmlands that lined Highway 402 outside of Strathroy, Ont., slipped past.

Bethany knows what happened next only through the accounts of other people. A small car and a motorcycle were involved in a collision that would eventually cost the motorcyclist his life; coming upon that crash, a transport truck driver would hit his brakes to avoid it; the Sunfire was travelling behind the transport with Bethany asleep in the passenger seat. As the brake lights flashed, her boyfriend desperately tried to avoid the suddenly stopping rig. He couldn’t.

Looking at photos of the Sunfire it’s hard to believe Bethany and her boyfriend survived. He would require 100 stitches, but Bethany would have her life altered forever because of one chance decision she made before nodding off.

She had put her feet on the dash.

A deployed airbag inflates at about 320 km/h. That’s a little faster than most Formula One cars race. This is what hit Bethany’s hamstrings, driving her knees into her face. Her left eye socket and cheekbone were broken, as was her nose. Her jaw was dislocated, a tooth cut through her lower lip and she would lose her spleen. Both feet were broken and compressed, and would eventually end up nearly 2 sizes smaller than they were before the crash. Her left pupil would remain permanently dilated affecting her vision, her hearing would remain altered and her memory would be wiped and rebooted like a faulty computer program. But perhaps the most dangerous injury would be the one her mother was told at the time not to worry about: a brain bleed.

Before August 2, 2010, Bethany Benson had been on her way to becoming a teacher. In September, she would be heading back to Trent University to finish her degrees in French and History, then on to a B. Ed in Teacher’s College. Instead, after a day on life support following the crash, she awoke no longer bilingual; she would have to relearn French, and even much of her English.

Four years later, the young woman sitting before me appears to be like any other 26-year-old. She matter-of-factly lists off the injuries she suffered, though sometimes coming back to things she’s left out. She was slated to have her first amateur boxing match that fall, proving herself to be more than a casual athlete. Kayaking, rollerblading, skating, snowboarding; she tells me surrendering her various gear in the year after the crash was difficult, a tangible acceptance of changes that would be permanent.

“Any shoes I wear have to have these special orthotics in them. They cost $450, and the shoes they fit cost $180. I had to get rid of my high heels, I know it sounds dumb…”

No, it doesn’t sound dumb. Along with losing so much of what many of us take for granted, she also lost most of her friends. That boyfriend who was driving is gone, and Bethany is still angry that he wasn’t charged. I tell her four years is a long time to carry around something she can’t change; when I ask her mother later how she feels towards the boy, she smiles and says she has no hard feelings at all.

That brain bleed? Bethany was no longer the Bethany she was before the crash. She says she could no longer do what her friends were doing; bars and clubs are physically draining, her hearing now ultra sensitive. Her mother adds more nuance.

“I got back a different daughter. I lost a sweet 22-year-old who worked full-time and put herself through university. She was on a great path. I got a 13-year-old with anger issues.” In the months immediately following the crash, Bethany would text people in the middle of the night. Texts that were angry and inappropriate, texts she doesn’t remember sending, but texts that many couldn’t see as a product of a damaged, changed brain. With fits of rage interspersed with understandable depressions, this Bethany is no longer that Bethany.

Mary Lachapelle is a housing co-ordinator with Durham Region. Brunette like her oldest daughter, she has a lovely smile that she uses often, though her words are tinged with a kind of resignation. Where Bethany has told me she realizes she will no longer be able to teach or do most of the sports she once loved, Mary has been forced to take a longer view.

“I have had to realize that my child will always live with me. We’ll have to find a house that affords us both some privacy and separation, but she is essentially a 13-year-old.”

I’ve asked to speak with Mary for some perspective on Bethany’s life since the crash, and what the future may hold. It quickly becomes clear that everything Bethany must deal with in turn becomes something Mary must.

“There will be no early retirement. Bethany only has medical benefits through my work, and there’s no way I can let that go.” In the years since the crash, their days have been filled with lawyers and lawsuits and insurance companies as well as the medical fallout of a daughter who has suffered a major brain injury. Within that legal labyrinth, Bethany is actually suing her own mother. Mary shrugs with a wry smile; Bethany flinches as she tells me this. Insurance companies work in twisted ways sometimes.

In an odd footnote, Bethany had been involved in a collision on August 2, 2009 – exactly one year before this crash. A cab she was riding in in Toronto was t-boned. The legal fallout from that event has been folded into this one as lawyers and insurance adjustors argue over who will pay what to whom.

“They said the brain bleed would be absorbed back into her body. It seemed her physical injuries were the biggest problems,” says her mother. In retrospect, there are questions about what opportunities or treatments might have been lost because of this line of reasoning.

“My daughter is 26. I’m not legally able to know what meds she might be taking, or when. And yet, she is basically a 13-year-old, with all the immaturity and impulsiveness you would associate with that. She’s naive.” As we speak Bethany is sitting nearby texting madly on her phone, their 14-year-old Lhasa Apso, Max, at her feet. It is clear mother and daughter are close; it is also clear that Mary has had to support these myriad new problems and challenges while simultaneously grieving the loss of the child she once had.

In all of our exchanges and throughout our meeting, Bethany is adamant about getting out the message: everything she had, everything she was, changed because she put her feet up on that dash. Airbags and seatbelts are designed to save you, but you compromise that with something as mundane as improper and reclined seating positions. Bethany wants to be an advocate, be able to pass along the message to others who could benefit from all she has suffered.

Speaking with her mother, I sense an even broader message. With insurance companies putting a two-year cap on progress – a benchmark passed 2 years ago – Mary wonders if her daughter has reached her peak recovery.

“I don’t know if she’s improving, or if I’m just getting better at managing.”