On New Year's morning, about 300 runners gather in Fort Thomas for the 10th annual Frostbite 5.

        They include Kent Enzweiler and his sister Mary, regulars at this 5-mile race. Mary, who is 40, will run. Kent, 35, will watch from his wheelchair with his parents, Ervin and Jane, by his side.

Kent Enzweilerıs father and youngest sister, Ervin and Mary Enzweiler, help him into bed at Drake Center. (Steven M. Herppich photos) | ZOOM |

        Mary is concerned about Kent, how he'll react, what he's feeling. It's his first race since an accident severely damaged his brain.

        Other runners approach, one at a time. They know him as one of Cincinnati's top marathoners and a good friend.

        “Hi there, Kent.”

        “Happy New Year.”

        “Good to see you.”

        He stiffly offers a hand to shake. He tries to greet them: “How are ... How are ... ”

        The brain knows what it wants to say. The voice can't comply quickly enough. So his father completes the question. How are you?

        As the 10:30 start nears, Mary leans close to Kent and says, “Thanks for coming.”

        She knows that for Kent to get to this point was more grueling than any 26.2-mile marathon. It has been a long, difficult struggle — first to survive, then to move his eyes, to recognize a face, to say a name or say anything.

        Mary and her family know Kent's struggle, because it's their struggle, too.

        They're all running a marathon now. It began March 11.

        Mary left her Edgewood home and ran 20 miles that cool, sunny Sunday morning. She assumed Kent, who lived in Mount Lookout, had planned a long run, too. Their next race — the Boston Marathon — was five weeks away. They always went together, but trained separately.

        She was still breathing hard when she returned home and heard the phone ring. A doctor told her to come to University Hospital.

        She saw Kent's training partners. Eric McBride had suffered minor injuries in the accident. He and Nick Ciaccio were in tears.

Kentıs best marathon was Chicago, 1999, when he finished in 2 hours, 38 minutes. This photo is from a 1997 race. | ZOOM |

        Kent and Eric had been running side-by-side along Madison Road in O'Bryonville, with Nick trailing by 150 yards. Just before 9:30, a minivan missed a curve, crossed the center line and veered onto the sidewalk toward Kent and Eric. Kent put a hand on Eric's shoulder, as if to push him out of the way. Then the minivan struck Kent, hurling his body into a yard.

        The 18-year-old minivan driver told police he reached down between the seats and took his eyes off the road. Police cited him for failure to maintain control, and he paid a $100 fine.

        In Kent's room in intensive care, Mary thought she might faint. She was dizzy, perhaps dehydrated from her run. Or maybe her mind couldn't handle the sight of Kent's battered body.

        His eyes were open, but vacant, and his face still bore marks of road grime. He breathed with the help of a ventilator, its tube taped to his mouth. He had fractures to his pelvis, right rib, left shinbone and a bone in his upper spine, just below the neck.

        But the worst was the traumatic brain injury.

        At impact, Kent's head whipped back and forth, bouncing his brain off the inside of his skull. Nerve fibers, called axons, had stretched and torn. Axons allow the brain's parts to communicate with each other.

        The jarring also bruised Kent's frontal lobes, behind his forehead. Those lobes control sophisticated motor behaviors and emotion.

        Close to death, Kent received last rites from a priest.

        His family saw an image of his brain. White spots indicated damaged areas.

        “It wasn't in one place,” Jane, his 71-year-old mother, says. “It was all over.”

        She prayed. “I didn't pray for him to live. I didn't pray for him to die. I just prayed. I said, "Whatever will be, will be.' ”

        Kent indicated in his living will that he did not want to be resuscitated should his breathing stop or heart fail. But the family insisted he be fed intravenously.

        “I could not see starving my brother to death,” Mary says.

        Mary and her two older sisters, Karen Enzweiler and Joan Singleton, had always been close to Kent. He was the youngest sibling and the only boy. They doted on him.

Kent relaxes as his father, Ervin, shaves him at Drake Center. | ZOOM |

        The girls watched their father, Ervin, surround him with athletic equipment. They attended Kent's Knothole baseball games. They followed his progress at Campbell County High, where he played basketball and graduated near the top of his class.

        He earned scholarships and enrolled at Ohio State, where he majored in mechanical engineering. After graduation he worked in Cleveland for a time, but he returned to Cincinnati in 1990 to take a job with the city's Water Works.

        When Karen and Joan married and had children, Kent became a favorite uncle, baby sitter and athletic booster.

        For Mary, who like Kent is single, he hung wallpaper and cleaned gutters.

        Now, faced with Kent's brain injury, Mary and her family discussed what it meant to keep him alive. Mary was blunt. If Kent wasn't brain dead, she said, the decision had been made. God made it.

        And Kent wasn't brain dead. His strong athlete's heart kept beating. Within a few days of the accident, doctors said Kent would survive. But the prognosis was that “he'd be a vegetable lying on his back the rest of his life,” his 72-year-old father, Ervin, says.

        “I always had hope,” he says. “I didn't give up on him.”

        Mary didn't give up either. But the relief she felt was tempered by grim, new realities. She told one of Kent's Water Works co-workers to clean out his desk.

        “He's not coming back to work,” Mary said.

        Kent moved April 2 to Drake Center, a rehabilitation and long-term-care hospital in Hartwell. He couldn't talk or swallow. He was being fed through a tube. He had already lost more than 25 pounds, and was continuing to lose. He stared blankly into space. His medical records described his condition as a “persistent vegetative state.” In essence, a coma.

        Mary was elated that Kent was sent to Drake, rather than a nursing home, because Drake offered his best shot at rehabilitation.

        At Drake, Mary and her family met Marilyn Baker, a speech-language pathologist. She would try to get Kent to swallow, to track objects visually, and to respond to questions with a yes or no.

        The family asked what they could do.

        Talk to him, Ms. Baker advised. Even though he gave no indication he understood anything they said or, for that matter, if he knew who they were.

Kent (above, seated front right) celebrates his 35th birthday in November at Drake Center with running friends (from left) Michelle Mock, Joe Fung, John Camele, Eric McBride, Cathy Brewer. Eric was running with Kent when the accident happened, but Ericıs injuries were minor. | ZOOM |

        Mary posted a calendar in his room for family members to jot down weekly visitation schedules, which they follow to this day. Someone was there to talk with Kent almost every waking hour.

        Karen, at 47 the oldest sister, came in the morning and stayed through lunch, when her five children were in school. Kent's parents arrived at 2 and stayed until at least 6. Joan, who is 45, or Mary came each evening after work.

        Mary sometimes talked to Kent about silly things, like the old Andy Griffith shows they used to watch. And races, of course.

        She is a pharmacist who, like Kent, has prematurely gray hair and dark eyebrows. She took up running during her six years in Flemingsburg, Ky. She moved back to Northern Kentucky about the time Kent returned to Cincinnati from Cleveland.

        One day she asked her brother, who had never run competitively, “When are you going to do a race with me?”

        His first 5K was the 1992 Law Day Trial Run in Cincinnati. After that, they always met at Kent's house for races north of the Ohio River. For races on the Kentucky side, they met at Mary's.

        By 1993, Kent and Mary were ready to attempt their first marathon, in Columbus.

        The shy, quiet pair didn't tell anyone, fearful they would embarrass themselves. But both ran well enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And for both, that prestigious race became an annual pilgrimage.

Karen Enzweiler, Kentıs oldest sister, helps him use the phone. Kentıs speech picked up markedly in September, six months after his accident. | ZOOM |

        After Kent's accident, though, Mary decided not to run the 2001 Boston race. She had never gone without him. What's more, her training dropped off.

        But she still had the plane and hotel reservations they'd made together. On April 13, three days before the race, she decided to go.

        She couldn't get Kent off her mind. She wept on the plane, and again in her room at the Hilton hotel where they always stayed. She stuck to the routine she and Kent followed. Ate at the same Subway and Dunkin' Donuts. Attended Mass at the same church. Rode the same train.

        Come race day, the lump in her throat told her she was losing control of her emotions. She had to get her mind right. She neared the starting line wearing a white wristband with KENT spelled out in red letters.

        She talked to him as she ran.

        Kent, you've got to pull me through this.

        Kent, be with me.

        Kent, get me past this hill.

        The miles clicked by.

        Mary finished in 3 hours, 25 minutes, one of her best races.

        She rushed back to the hotel and called Kent's room at Drake. A friend held the phone to his ear as Mary told him all about the race, the runners, old friends she'd seen.

        Kent never uttered a sound.

        Kent's progress during the first few months at Drake was painfully slow.

        Ms. Baker, the speech pathologist, tried to get his eyes to track balloons that she batted across the room. She waved a bright red bandana. She blew bubbles.

        Mary and her family looked for any small improvement, but they often came home disappointed. Then one spring day when Kent's room TV was tuned to a NASCAR race, Mary noticed Kent's eyes following cars around the track, and she felt a twinge of hope.

Colleen Baker, (above) a physical therapist assistant at Drake Center, helps Kent practice standing last week. | ZOOM |

        To get Kent to swallow, Ms. Baker put small ice chips in his mouth. He coughed and spit, but in time he began chewing them. That led to teaspoons of water. And then to soft foods.

        “I swear I think she saved his life,” Mary says. “Because she got him to start eating.”

        Kent's weight, which had dropped from 172 to 119, began climbing.

        But he still couldn't communicate. Anyone who entered Kent's room — speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, internist, neurologist and the Enzweilers — pursued a simple goal: get him to signal yes or no.

        They tried to get him to blink an eye or to nod his head. To raise a finger or wiggle a toe. To point with his foot. They used paddles marked “yes” and “no” and tried to get him to shift his eyes toward one or the other.

        Mary remained hopeful that something good would happen. But when?

        She, too, worked on yes and no. She held up Kent's favorite Pop Tart, strawberry. “Do you like these?” She held up her favorite, chocolate fudge. “Do you like these?”

        Nothing.

        Says Karen: “I remember praying, "Let him do yes and no.' So I could say, "Are you in pain?' and he could say, "yeah.' ”

        Weeks passed. A month. Two months.

        Kent was eating better, but Mary and her family still didn't know what he could comprehend. They didn't know if he was in there, somewhere, trapped behind those greenish-blue eyes, unable to escape.

        Mary felt good about the support shown for Kent. His running pals visited frequently, as well as other friends, co-workers, neighbors, former classmates and teachers. He was on prayer lists at several churches.

        But as her one-way conversations with Kent continued, Mary felt helpless. It seemed there was nothing she could do for her brother. The mental grind of coming to Drake and seeing little progress left her frustrated and exhausted.

        At night, she would tell Kent goodbye, get in her car, and cry all the way home. She still does, sometimes.

        “What was hard was knowing what kind of person he was,” Jane, his mother, says. “He was an intelligent young man. To know what he was, and what he is, that was hard.”

        One day, Joan was sure he understood a conversation. “Mary and I were talking about his house,” she says, “and how even if he did come out of this he could probably never go back because of the steps. He got real upset, and it almost brought tears to his eyes.”

        Another day, Ervin and Jane stood at his door as he stared out a window. They called his name, and he turned his head toward them.

        For Mary, a breakthrough came on a Saturday night. She brushed his teeth, gave him a drink of water and told him to rinse. He swished the water around and spit.

        Stunned, Mary began to cry. It was the first time Kent had followed one of her commands. She held his face in her hands, shook him gently, and said, “That was so good.” His eyes lit up.

        When therapists moved him out of bed and into a wheelchair, Mary and her family rejoiced. They began taking Kent on walks through the hospital and outside. For Father's Day, they wheeled him into Drake's courtyard and had a pizza party. He was eating so well, the staff began giving him double portions.

        Through the summer, Ms. Baker continued working on his speech. He managed only a whisper. “You could make it into any word you wanted,” Mary says.

        To get Kent to push air through his throat, Ms. Baker had him blow bubbles or a whistle, which he quickly mastered.

        His whispers grew louder.

        The last day of August, Ms. Baker and two other therapists were in Kent's room. They asked if he wanted anything.

        “Smoothie,” Kent said.

        In September, Kent began uttering more words, although they were difficult to understand. He recognized people and said their names.

        “It buoyed everyone's spirits,” Mary says.

        Sept. 11 — the six-month anniversary of his accident — Kent watched TV news coverage of the terrorist attacks and became visibly upset. He repeated words over and over. Ed. Fire. Help. Sad.

        Only Mary understood. She and Kent had a friend named Ed whom they'd met on a bicycling vacation. Ed worked in the World Trade Center.

        Mary got an e-mail that said Ed was OK. Kent seemed relieved.

        He began picking up on phrases he heard others say, and repeating them often. So Mary peppered him with questions: When's your birthday? What's your Social Security number? What's the square root of 81?

        Kent nailed every answer.

        Mary felt rejuvenated. Nine months after the accident, Kent's progress gave the long-distance runner her second wind.

        He kept improving. In the fall Kent began using a hydraulic walker. The device supported most of his weight, and did most of the work. Still, he moved his left leg by himself, and his right leg about half the time.

        He worked hard, telling his therapists: “I'm no candy ass.”

        He continued speech therapy with Ms. Baker. One day she leaned over his wheelchair. He stared intently into her eyes.

        “Kent, remember all those months we wanted you to make a sound? Now you've got to make the sounds into words.”

        She told him to push his tongue against his teeth and say dizzy. He did. The drill continued with doughnut, dodge, dill, do, doily and then phrases and sentences. Sometimes he mumbled or slurred. Sometimes not.

        “I would like some fresh fruit,” he repeated after her.

        “Kent, that was a 10!”

        Sometimes, he spoke about his frustration.

        “I was so beautiful,” Kent said one day as therapists encouraged him to propel his wheelchair.

        “You are beautiful,” a therapist replied.

        “Convince me,” he said.

        To Mary, such statements confirmed Kent knew how far he'd fallen. And how far he had to go.

        He couldn't stand on his own. Couldn't use his arms and hands as he wanted.

        His sadness also surfaced during quiet moments with his sister Karen. Sometimes, Kent cried.

        “My parents are so encouraged and enthusiastic because he's talking and he's rational and he's moving his leg,” Karen says. “I see the other side of it. I see the frustration, the anxiety, the depression.

        “I hesitate in saying this, but it would have been easier to deal with death,” Karen says, her eyes welling with tears. “Because it's over, and we know what we have to deal with. Now, we've got this unknown.”

        Karen does not run marathons. But as a caregiver for her brother, she felt what it was like to hit the wall.

        Mentally, marathons play with your mind, Mary says. “Everything's saying: Stop! Stop!”

        “I don't care how many you do, they never get easier. Every time I run one, I hope I can finish.”

        She didn't know if she could finish last October's Columbus Marathon. She reaggravated an Achilles injury by mile 5. Her right foot began throbbing, with all of 21 miles to go.

        She looked at her wristband, with KENT spelled out in red letters. For God sakes, your heel hurts. Run through it. Kent can't even walk. Surely I can't be the candy ass.

        Mary finished the race.

        For Kent's family, the finish line isn't in sight.

        Says Karen: “You don't know if he's going to make more progress or if this is it. Until you know, it's hard to deal with. Because you have to accept Kent the way he is right now, today. Not the way we would like him to be, or the way he may be, or the way he was. You have to live for this day and accept him.”

        As 2001 wound down, Mary's life revolved around three things: Kent, running and work. Kent always came first.

        She no longer brought work home, because there was no time to catch up. Her social life took a dive. She cut back on gym workouts and running. She was always tired.

        But she didn't complain. She saw the same dedication in her family.

        Jane only occasionally took breaks from Drake visits. Ervin hadn't missed one day since the accident. Relatives invited them to spend a couple of weeks at a Florida condominium. They declined, to be with Kent.

        “Some things aren't as important as they used to be,” Jane says, “and some things are more important.”

        Karen once filled her days with volunteer activities: cancer society, hospice, her children's school, a nursing home. She pulled back from much of that to devote time to Kent. Joan found herself spending less time with her teen son.

        They're all running a marathon now.

        Says Karen: “This has shown me how strong my siblings are. And where their strengths are. And my parents, too. It's made me a better person, but you know, I don't think God would have had to put us through this. I don't know what the reason was.”

        “Sometimes,” Mary says, “I think maybe it was to show everybody how we care for each other.”

        Kent knows they care. One day during a life skills class, a therapist asked: What makes you feel good about yourself?

        Kent's answer: My dad.

        Whom do you most respect?

        My mom.

        “Every answer was about his family and his friends,” says Suzanne Mantuano, an occupational therapy assistant. “That's all it seems that Kent really, truly needs. He knows they're going to be there.

        “His family is the most essential part of the team,” she says. “He draws motivation from them. They've never given up. They've never been, "Oh, I'll do this for you.' They've always challenged him.”

        With effort, he can bring a forkful of food to his mouth now. He can slowly propel himself down a hall in his wheelchair. He can take day trips.

        Mary sometimes wonders what the future will hold for her and Kent. She is closest to his age. Where will they be in five years? Ten years?

        “The way I look at it, it's a lifelong commitment. That's fine. If that's what it needs to be, that's fine. If this takes us both into our old, old age, that's all the better.”

        On a recent Tuesday night, Mary watched an old Andy Griffith Show with her brother. Then she placed 3-pound weights in each of his hands. “Up and down,” she instructed, and he began pumping his arms.

        “Up and down,” Kent says. “Up and down. Up and down.” He repeated it over and over, his voice growing louder, more agitated.

        “OK, you worked out good,” Mary says.

        With his left hand, Kent pulled his T-shirt to his mouth, and started biting. He's torn dozens of shirts to shreds this way, and nobody's quite sure why. Frustration, perhaps.

        Mary tried to get him to print his name on a Magna Doodle writing toy. He's done it before. Not tonight.

        “I'm stupid, stupid, stupid,” he says.

        Mary washed his hair. He tried to bite the towel around his shoulders, then he calmed as she dried him. She rubbed powder on his shoulders and neck, and readied him for bed.

        Not long ago, she came across Kent's driver's license. She stared closely at the picture. After months of being consumed with his daily care, she had almost forgotten how he once looked, what he was like. He was the brother with whom she traveled across the country on adventurous bicycling vacations, the brother who cleaned out her gutters, who went to races with her.

        She wondered how much of that brother she would ever get back.

        Mary persuaded Kent to go to the Frostbite 5. He didn't want to. Not at first.

        She was apprehensive, too. She knew he sometimes felt overwhelmed in large groups and became agitated. And she wasn't sure how he would react at a race he couldn't run.

        Nor was Mary sure how she would handle her own emotions. She and Kent always had gone to races together. Hung out together. Warmed up together.

        In the days leading to the Frostbite, she prodded him. The race, after all, was near Karen's home, where they would have New Year's Day dinner. And Kent's running buddies wanted to see him.

        On race day, when Mary arrived early at Drake to help him with breakfast, Kent was willing to go.

        His parents brought him out on the cold, sunny day. Kent was wearing Asics running shoes. The ones he wore when he trained for marathons.

        It was good, Mary thought, to see him calmly greeting old friends. Good to see him keep his emotions in check.

        About 10:30 his parents moved him to a hill overlooking the starting line.

        Mary stood beside her brother as long as possible. She and Kent were back at a race, finally. She was thankful for that. Then she left him to join the other runners.

        The starting gun fired. More than 300 people began moving. Someone shouted Kent's name.

        Mary looked to the hill where Kent sat in his wheelchair. She threw up her hand, waved. The familiar lump in her throat told her that her emotions were getting the best of her. She had to get her mind right.

        Don't hyperventilate, she told herself.

        Just run.

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