Bennie Brown knew her son had a fighting chance when he started blinking his eyes again.

“Once for yes, twice for no,” said Brown, a DeSoto resident and the mother of Broderick Wills, a DeSoto High School student who was badly injured in a car wreck last spring and given little chance to recover.

The accident left him unable to move or communicate, and what doctors once thought was a coma turned into a diagnosis of locked-in syndrome, a neurological disorder in which victims can think and reason but are mute and paralyzed.

Brown and her family are seeing strong signs that Broderick is slowly recovering.

“God told me to get his MySpace password from him,” once she realized her son was communicating with his eyes, Brown said.

She passed her fingers over letters of the alphabet, and Broderick blinked when she came to the first letter of his password. The two of them repeated the procedure until the password had been spelled out.

Broderick’s mother also put together color charts, and Broderick was able to figure out his birthday and other important details of his life that way.

“What I’ve learned the most is that people who are in accidents don’t remember it happening if they are badly hurt,” Brown said.

Broderick is no different. His mother says he still believes he is a 14-year-old high school freshman rather than a 15-year-old sophomore who is home-schooled in advance placement classes four hours a week.

The accident happened on a rainy night — March 14, 2009 — about the same time the DeSoto boys basketball team beat Cedar Hill to claim the Class 5A state championship.

Broderick was one of  four people in a car traveling on Westmoreland Road. Wet conditions caused the car to hydroplane into a ditch, and it also hit a tree.

Broderick was in the backseat when it happened and was the only passenger who was seriously injured.

Brown got a call that night from a driver who came upon the accident, found Broderick’s cellphone and gave her a call.

“He said, ‘Ma’am, your son has been in a really bad accident,’” said Phyllis Washington of DeSoto, Broderick’s aunt.

Brown got there as soon as she could.

“When I got to the scene, I saw the car and started running,” she said. “It was like I was running in slow motion.”

Broderick was taken to Methodist Dallas Medical Center, where he stayed for two and a half months before moving to Texas Children’s Hospital.

Doctors told Brown and her family to expect the worst. In July, Brown took Broderick home to continue his treatment.

“He hadn’t really responded to his treatment, but a few days after he went home, he just started to get better,” Brown said.

Once Broderick started to blink his eyes, Brown realized his reasoning skills were intact. Later, he started to develop some sensation on the right side of his body, and now he can move a little bit on that side.

He can also breathe on his own, but doctors aren’t going to wean him from his breathing tube until after the cold and flu season, Brown said.

“He likes to pucker up for kisses, too,” said Broderick’s grandmother, Mary Washington of Hutchins.

Brown and other members of her family were honored by the DeSoto boys basketball team and presented with a basketball autographed by all of the players before the Eagles’ District 11-5A victory over Mesquite Horn on Jan. 22.

Broderick remained at home during the ceremony, still not able to make the trip.

“Doctors are mystified at his recovery,” Brown said.

“You know it’s God,” Phyllis Washington said. “You just see the hand of God in everything, and you just keep going on to the next day.”