Family Recalls How They Found 'Hope' After 20-Year-Old Son's Coma: 'Let Me See My Baby's Eyes Again'

Davin Williams has re-learned to walk and talk after his parents were told he may spend his life on a ventilator following a car accident

Jennifer Rowland was having an otherwise uneventful December day when she got the call that would change the course of her life. Her 20-year-old son, Davin, had been in car accident.

"It was a Friday at 10 in the morning," Jennifer remembers in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE. "I'm a nurse and a lactation consultant so I was at the hospital at the time. My phone kept ringing but I was with a patient so I didn't pick up until I saw it was my son's boss calling."

Davin, who was working as a land surveyor with an engineering company when he wasn't attending college, had been on his way to a job site when an 18-wheeler pulled out in front of his work truck. The truck — in which Davin was a passenger — swerved and hit the back of the semi. All of the impact went to the passenger side.

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"His boss said there's been a horrible accident, they were working to get Davin out of the vehicle, and he would meet us at the Memphis trauma center, about 20 miles away," she tells PEOPLE.

Jennifer called her husband, David, and the two made the drive amid a whirlwind of emotions. Their son, meanwhile, was making a journey of his own — one that began with being trapped in the truck for nearly an hour while rescuers used the jaws of life to get him out.

"The wreck happened in a small town called Delta, Mississippi. It was overcast, so they couldn't fly him to the hospital via helicopter," Jennifer says. "So it took about an hour-and-a-half for him to get to the hospital by ambulance."

Though Jennifer and David didn't realize it at the time, a number of what they now call "miraculous" events happened in those excruciating first hours.

"Even though the air team couldn't fly the helicopter, they showed up via ambulance to assist," Jennifer says. "An off-duty paramedic also heard about the accident, and he came to the scene and got in the vehicle with Davin. He was tangled in this mess of metal, but they had access  to his face and his arm, so he was able to give him oxygen and an IV."

Once Jennifer and David were able to speak to doctors at the hospital, they got the news they feared the most: he was in a coma, and there was little doctors could do to save his life.

"Davin was was not responsive. His pupils were uneven, he was posturing — which means his arms and legs were doing things indicative of a brain injury," Jennifer recalls. "They gave us the worst diagnosis: a devastating neurological injury." One doctor even suggested considering palliative care.

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David and Jennifer would not accept that suggestion.

"Our faith would not allow us to think the worst," she says.

Some 24 hours later, the prognosis had shifted. A neurosurgeon told the couple that while Davin was in a coma, he did not see evidence to suggest that he had experienced the lack of oxygen to the brain that doctors had initially thought.

"That neurosurgeon gave us our first hope," Jennifer says. "He said, 'I have hope for him. He’s young, he’s healthy.' "

Still, Davin was facing months of recovery coming out of his coma.

"I was expecting it to be like the movies, where their eyes open and they say, 'How did I get here?' " Jennifer says. "It's not like that at all. It's a very subtle, very slow, emerging. It would start with an eye blink ... I would just say, 'Lord, let me see the whites of his eyes, let me see my baby's eyes again.' "

And one day, they opened. And the next week, they opened a little more, with Davin scanning the room. Then he began wiggling his toes on command. And then — a more seismic shift.

"It took probably two-and-a-half weeks from the time his eyes began to open before he really woke up and I will never forget that moment," Jennifer says. "So many things he did, the doctors would say, 'Oh that's just a reflex.' But one day, I asked him for a thumbs up, and his thumb just went smooth in the air. Well, you can't deny a thumbs up. That's no reflex."

Davin fractured his jaw in two places, plus part of his nose and the area around his eye, but those "all healed basically on his own," Jennifer says. It was the brain injury that was the most critical.

After 41 days in the trauma center, he was moved to extended care and, shortly after, transferred to Atlanta's Shepherd Center, a hospital focusing on rehabilitation for those with with spinal cord and brain injuries.

While doctors had initially said Davin might never walk again, he did so — without any assistance — just eight months after the accident.

"They sent us with a walker," Davin's dad, Davin, tells PEOPLE. "He transitioned from that to a cane within two weeks. Fast-forward another two weeks, then he transitioned to walking without any assistance."

Speaking through tears, Jennifer adds: "It was just like a child learning to walk. I would hold out my arms and say, 'Take a step to me,' and he would, and I would cry and cheer. It was like him taking his first steps again."

Those first moments have served as hallmarks for Davin's recovery — his first smile, his first laugh, his first "Hi, Mom," all reminders of the teenager he had always been.

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Speaking to PEOPLE in a gentle voice, Davin says his two brothers — one 18 and the other 14 — and his girlfriend have also played a role in his recovery.

"They've been good," he says.

Now with their lives forever changed, Davin's parents say they are hopeful for the future — though they acknowledge the timetable has shifted. A former community college student, Davin had been accepted into Mississippi State University, and had planned to attend the school this fall. For now, that plan is on hold, though the family remains confident that it's only a matter of time until he enrolls.

"Just to watch him overcome things ... His attitude has been amazing," Jennifer says. "Of all the things he could be angry about, he’s never shown that. It's really inspiring, for us and so many others."

David concurs, saying, "If we heard it once, we heard it a million times: recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. But we believe he can be fully recovered. It takes time and hard work and patience. And he’s got all of that."

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