CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — It was a mother’s worst nightmare. Maria Lopez, a single mother of three, answered her door one August afternoon to find employees from her eldest daughter’s school.

“They told me, ‘Prepare yourself. They’re taking Brenda to the hospital,’” Lopez said.

Brenda Zamorano, then 17, had been found unconscious in the bathroom at school.

Lopez later discovered that her daughter had suffered a brain hemorrhage after an arteriovenous malformation ruptured. Less than 1 percent of the population is born with this condition, and ruptures most often occur in people ages 15 to 20.

“I started to pray and pray and pray,” said Lopez, a devout evangelical Christian. “It’s purely God’s mercy that Brenda is alive.”

But the brain injury left her daughter paralyzed and unable to speak.

Zamorano recently turned 19. The once vibrant and healthy teen, who dreamed of becoming a stylist, now spends most of her days in a wheelchair in a bedroom she shares with her mother and her sisters, ages 5 and 10. Zamorano will need 24-hour-a-day care for the rest of her life; she can’t breathe or eat on her own, using tubes in her throat and stomach and relying on diapers.

This has been devastating for her and her family, which has had to pay out of pocket for treatment. She lacks health insurance because of a federal rule that makes it virtually impossible for her and tens of thousands of other young immigrants to get affordable coverage.