In 2015, boxer Prichard Colón was repetitively hit during a fight and suffered a major brain injury that nearly killed him. He was in a coma for seven months and specialists predicted he would spend his life in a vegetative state. But he kept defying the odds, surviving and waking and eventually communicating. Some days, he believes it’s still 2015 and he is 23 years old and healthy. So his mother and his therapist at Brooks Rehabilitation in Orange Park, Fla., take a breath and begin a story they’ve told him many times. “There was a fight, Prichard, against an opponent named Terrel Williams. You were hurt that night, but you’re getting better.”
Written by Kent Babb. Photographed for The Washington Post.
