Karen McGregor-Dawson sits in a wheelchair in an old people's hospital and wonders about the 16-year-old who put her there.
She wonders if he is remorseful about stealing a Mercedes and smashing into her Toyota Rav4 on a joyride to Auckland a month ago. The accident at DomeValley, 75km north of Auckland, left McGregor-Dawson with a broken femur in her left leg, broken wrist and collar bone, injured toes and facial bruising.
Hemi Noble, 17, of Kaitaia and Frederick Murphy, 34, a hitchhiker who caught a ride at Kerikeri both died at the scene. Another 14-year-old passenger was seriously injured.
McGregor-Dawson feels no animosity or bitterness towards the driver. There is no point, she says. It won't change what happened to her or bring back the lives of the two passengers.
She remembers little about the accident apart from coming round and seeing Annie Fenlon at the window of her crumpled Rav4, talking to her, telling her she would be alright.
Fenlon was on the deck of her Warkworth home when she saw a north-bound police car do a u-turn and start back after the stolen Mercedes. She heard the Mercedes accelerate and within seconds there was mayhem at her front gate.
She feels compassion for both sides - for McGregor-Dawson whom she describes as "so brave and so humble", and the boy sitting handcuffed at the end of her driveway, watching dead bodies being laid out on the ground.
Meanwhile, McGregor-Dawson's goal is to get out of the rest home and be on her feet by Christmas. A committed Christian with the Pursuit Pentecostal church in Three Kings, she says her faith played an enormous role in her survival and recovery. She believed God was with her and jokes that when she heard rescue workers were convinced there was a second person in the crumpled Rav4, she quipped "that was Jesus".
