Emily Blake: School bus crash victim
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KAREN O'SULLIVAN: How did the day start?
Sue Blake: Just like any other ordinary day really, just yeah, pretty chaotic start to the day, getting four kids out the door to school. Me, waving goodbye to Emily at the front door and watching her walk down the track, which I did most days and calling out to her, "Love you, Em." And she'd call back to me, "Love you, Mum."
Sue Blake: Oh, just tricking me!
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Emily lives on her dad's dairy farm in Nullawarre in Victoria. On 18 November 2009, he went to pick her and her two brothers up from school. But Emily asked if she could take the bus home with her friends and her favourite driver. Tell me about her personality?
Colin Karl Collett: She was a livewire. She was a livewire and she loved everyone on the bus. She was a special girl, very special girl.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: It was a route Colin had driven hundreds of times before. Emily was two stops from home when the bus, which had no seat belts fitted, pulled out of a private road into the path of a grain truck doing over 80 km/h.
Colin Karl Collett: When they found the bus, there was no driver in the bus - I'd gone through the right-hand window and hit the front of the truck and was 50 yards down the road from the bus. The bus had travelled 50 yards without a driver in it.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: At the scene, another mother phoned Sue, Emily's mum.
Sue Blake: "Just get here" was all she said and I just thought she was dying at that point and then I got there and it was just chaos, really, and Emily was in the back of the ambulance being resuscitated. And it was... She was covered in blood and it was just a horrible image.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Time was critical. An air ambulance was scrambled to medivac Emily to the Royal Children's Hospital In Melbourne. Sue, an ICU nurse, insisted she fly with her daughter.
Sue Blake: There was no doubt I was just going on that helicopter with her. Her decision would save Emily's life.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: As the helicopter sped the 400km to Melbourne, the ventilator supplying Emily with oxygen failed. The actual ventilator wasn't working on the helicopter and so there was myself and an ambo in the back. So I would take over hand-ventilating her. I was breathing for my child, basically. And it was weird because it was the nurse functioning and not the mother.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: At the Children's Hospital, the neurosurgery team were on alert. Just the day before, they'd completed the exhausting 32-hour operation to separate conjoined twins, Trishna and Krishna. But now, all their attention was on Emily. As Sue and the MICA paramedic team wheeled Emily into Emergency, waiting inside was neurosurgeon, Dr Alison Wray.
Dr Alison Wray: We had just finished separating the twins the day before.
We got the trauma alert that, you know, our worst nightmare had happened -
that there'd been a school bus crash. She had a devastating brain injury.
I was very honest with her family and said to them that I was quite concerned that we might not be able to get Emily through this.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: At that point, did you think you'd lost her?
Dan Blake: No, I don't think I ever thought that. I never thought we were going to lose her. But I just didn't know what to expect, what she'd be like.
Sue Blake: We're in shock. I mean, when I last saw Emily, she was going on the bus to school a fit, healthy, beautiful child and then within, well, not even 12 hours, we were in Melbourne and she's fighting for her life. Everything was gone - no speech, nothing. It was like probably a newborn baby again with less movement. We went to the chapel and we just prayed and at that time I was thinking "where are we going to bury her?" and, you know, you shouldn't have to have to think of things like that.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: With time running out for Emily, doctors bet everything on a radical procedure. Their plan was to lower Emily's body temperature over the course of several hours to a state of hypothermia.
Sue Blake: The idea was to channel the blood to the vital organs and to minimise the workload of the brain to sort of shut the body right down. The deep freeze helped stabilise Emily but there were more operations
ahead.
MAN: Are you peeping out of there again, Emily?
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Days turned into weeks. Though conscious, Emily remained unresponsive.
Dan Blake: I'm going to put you in a chair, Em.
Sue Blake: From day one, we talked to her as if she was listening to us.
We'd tell her who was there to see her and, you know, we'd just tell her everything. We had an amazing team of friends and family that we basically had a roster who was sleeping in the room with her each night and as someone would go out of the room, someone would come in. She was never left alone.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: And was it a case of the little girl that walked down the driveway slowly but surely coming back?
Sue Blake: No, it was - no. It was months before we even saw a glimpse of that. There was nothing there. She started opening her eyes and it'd be like "Is anybody home?"
(SINGS) # Emily, It's music time. #
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Christmas came.
(BRASS BAND PLAYS 'JINGLE BELLS')
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Emily was still unresponsive. Look who's here, Emily!
So many people have come in! Hope seemed forlorn. Mum's gone mental. But Sue and Dan refused to give up.
Dan Blake: At no time was I ever confident but I was always optimistic.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: What gave you optimism?
Dan Blake: Emily was, uh, she was always pretty tough so fourth child, had to raise herself.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: She is your baby, isn't she?
Dan Blake: Yep.
Sue Blake: I've got her message still on the answering machine, the phone, and I sometimes ring up just to hear her voice on, you know, I'd know no-one was home and the answering machine would cut in and I'd listen to her little voice because you know, I hadn't heard it for so long.
(PHONE RINGS)
Emily: You've reached the Blake family. We're quite busy so leave your number and we'll try and get back to you as soon as we can. Bye!
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Did you question why God would let this happen to your family?
Sue Blake: No. No. I thanked God for saving Emily so, I saw it from the other side and we are so thankful and grateful that Emily had been spared.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: I noticed the house and business is up for sale.
Because we're not part of the community for a lot of people here, I feel the best thing to do is for us to move on and start a new life somewhere else where people won't be carrying the grudge because of what happened
over the accident.
Colin: It wasn't my intention to drive in front of a truck doing 100km/h with a bus full of kids. I have to live with that.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: After the bus crash, Emily lay unresponsive for days, weeks, months. Then, unexpectedly, the first signs of recovery.
Sue Blake: We'd have the TV on for her and something funny would come on and we'd just start seeing this tiny little glimmer of a smile. And gradually that smile - it went on to a laugh or something funny would happen and she'd actually laugh at the right time, and we'd think, "Wow, like, if she knows that that's funny "and she's responding because it's funny, "she must know what's going on."
(LAUGHS)
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Laughing was the first step. And then came the first step.
Sue Blake: Well done, Emily, you are walking!
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Is it a miracle?
Sue Blake: Um, I will say it's a miracle in progress.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Emily defied every medical opinion and began to relearn everything. Nine months after the accident, Emily went home.
Sue Blake: What do you want for brekkie? Tell Alec what you want. He's going to help you with brekkie, OK? What are you going to have?
(LAUGHS)
Sue Blake: You trickster.
Alec Blake: Caught.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: But coming home was just the start.
Sue Blake: You're going to school this morning and we're going to try and make the bus.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: The time came eventually to get Emily back on the bus - that must have been hard.
Sue Blake: Terrible. Every time I walk down the track and I put her on the bus, my heart nearly just skips a beat because it's no different - there's no seatbelts on the bus...Off you go! ..and I feel like I'm putting her back in harm's way. But we want Emily to live a life as normal as possible and that's what Emily would do - she would travel on the bus to school.
Colin: I get in the car and I put my seatbelt on - It's a natural thing. It should be the same in a bus.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Could things have been different that day if there'd been seatbelts on the bus?
Colin Karl Collett: Most definitely. Most definitely. Maybe Emily would not have been injured.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: In Nullawarre, Colin has been ostracised by many, but not Sue - the person he least expected forgiveness from. When Sue came to visit you, what was that day like?
Colin Karl Collett: My wife was here, which was fortunate 'cause all I wanted to do was cry.
Sue Blake: I just said, "We forgive you" and I don't hold anything against him. He wouldn't intentionally hurt those children at all. He loved every one of those children on the bus.
Colin Karl Collett: Sue forgave me and said it wasn't my fault. I thank her very much for that. She's the best, really, the best lady that I know.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Emily's fightback has been nothing short of remarkable. Not only is she swimming and walking, she's even competed in a marathon.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: Best of all, one year after the accident Emily walked back into school.
Dr Alison Wray: With Emily, we're not seeing her plateauing. She's still making progress and she's still recovering so that gives us hope that she's going to continue to get better with time. It's wonderful to be proven wrong sometimes.
Dan Blake: I see more and more I see of the old Emily. She still hates chooks and she still hates guinea fowls... Guinea fowl over there. ..and she's still full of cheek and still always happy and Emily was always happy and that's, that's, yeah, that's a godsend, really.
KAREN O'SULLIVAN: What's she capable of achieving?
Sue Blake: Um, look, anything. Sky's the limit, really, yeah. I mean, we're blessed to have her, really so, you've just have to move on and we love her dearly and, um, and we are blessed to still have her with us.
Sue Blake: Come over here. Well done. Well done!
