Hail was falling late on March 27 when Ashley Burtt slammed her Geo Metro into a Volvo parked on Glenbrook Road in Stamford. The force of the impact sent the parked car flying 21 feet. The point of impact was on the driver's side door of Ashley's car.

Ashley, 23, a Stamford resident, was thrown to the passenger side of the car and then jolted back.

"Her brain was described to us like a bowl of Jell-O," her father, Ted, recalled recently during an interview with Ashley at his Stamford office, "It just smashed against the right side of her head."

As a result, Ashley suffered more than a dozen severe injuries, the worst being massive trauma to the right side of her brain, which left her in a "Level 1" coma- the deepest - for most of the next week.

In the accident, Ashley also fractured her hip joint and her pelvis, sliced open her face, tore her left lung, suffered a seizure in which she almost bit off her tongue, and ripped her trachea, an injury that caused "free flowing air" to swell up her chest, neck and left arm.

Dr. James E. Barone, surgeon in chief at Stamford Hospital, was on call when emergency workers brought Ashley in. He first noticed that Ashley was having difficulty breathing because of her chest injuries, she did not respond to any of his questions.

"We were very concerned about whether we were going to need to operate on her, " Barone says. "She was critically ill, her life was in danger."

Doctors thought the young woman's abdominal injuries might warrant immediate surgery, but there was a conflict. Because of her head and lung injuries, "It would have been a really serious problem" to get Ashley through an operation. Ashley had some blood outside her brain, though most of the bleeding was internal. Barone describes the injury as a "concussion," similar to a bruise on someone's thigh, but obviously involving a much more delicate part of the body.

Internal bleeding in the brain can cause swelling, which is what happened in Ashley's case. Doctors have no surgical procedure to reduce such swelling, so all they can do is provide medication.

"Then you just hope it gets resolved quick enough so the patient can recover," Barone says.

In the end, the only surgery performed by doctors at Stamford Hospital was a tracheostomy to enable Ashley to remain hooked up to a ventilator for an extended period of time.

Barone points out that many of Ashley's injuries could have been prevented. Ashley had been drinking, and fighting with her boyfriend the night of the accident. She sat down behind the wheel and did not put on a seatbelt.

"Her injuries would not have been as severe as there were if she had been wearing a seatbelt," Barone says.

Ashley emerged from the coma gradually, She left Stamford Hospital on April 19, three weeks after the accident, and was transferred to Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford. Gaylord's in-patient Traumatic Brain Injury Program treats patients emerging from coma during the 12-month period following injury. It is one of the few hospitals in the nation with a wing devoted solely to TBI cases.

It was at Gaylord that Ted and Ashley learned the hard numbers: By some estimates, there are 1 million traumatic brain injuries per year. Twenty percent of those injured die. The other 80 percent are force to reconstruct their lives, often having to re-learn what to many people are the simplest motor tasks: swallowing, chewing, walking.

It was also at Gaylord that Ashley first realized the extent of her injuries. There was a nurse in her room when she woke up.

"I said 'Tell me this is all a nightmare,'' Ashley recalls.

Doctors initially said that Ashley would be in the hospital for four to six months, followed by 12 to 18 months of outpatient rehabilitation. The reality turned out to be far less time consuming, Ashley was in the TBI unit at Gaylord from April 19 to July 12, where she began extensive physical therapy.

"I had to learn how to walk again," Ashley recalls. "One time I was on parallel bars and the nurse had to move my legs for me. I knew I had to do it, so I didn't find the rehabilitation difficult."

Gaylord Hospital also offers an on-site transitional living program for discharged patients relearning daily living skills. Ashley utilized that program form July 12 until her release Sept. 16, all the while continuing physical therapy aimed at helping her walk again. She also worked with a peer group to confront social issues she would face upon her discharge.

"At first, she had difficulty coming up with words if you asked her the names of things, "recalls Barbara Frumkin, a consulting neuropsychologist who worked with Ashley in the support group from July through September, "It was significant, but relatively mild. Her memory was within normal limits, as were simple attention, verbal memory and language skills. But she seemed to have more awareness into what her problems were through the interaction of the group."

Those involved in Ashley's rehabilitation credit her success to her spirit and perseverance. Even now, the young woman regularly exercises five times a day-three times more than doctors suggested she should. And she's reading her third book in two weeks in an effort to strengthen her cognitive skills.

Today, Ashley speaks with a slight slur, a direct result of the brain injury-not the tracheostomy, which was done below the vocal chords. She takes occupational and speech therapy three time a week at the Easter Seal Rehabilitation Center of Southwestern Connecticut in Stamford, where she also meets with a TBI survivors support group.

The left side of Ashley's body, which is controlled by the injured right side of her brain, is weaker than it used to be. She can't lift her left arm very high, a problem that prevents her from participating in one of her favorite pastimes; swimming. Her vision in one eye had been deteriorated before the accident and the injuries she sustained have speeded up the process. Those, and a hyper-extended knee, are her only remaining physical problems.

Doctors say she will recover fully from all her injuries, with the exception for her vision difficulties. She may also have difficulty with concentration and abstract reasoning.

Ashley appears neither embarrassed about the circumstances surrounding her accident, nor particularly proud of what doctors call "a remarkably good recovery." She wants her story in the public domain "because TBI is not something many people know about."

Sometimes, she blames herself for her injuries, though less now than she used to.

"I've felt like it's my fault, like I deserved it," she says. " Why?" "I don't know."

She also has no recollection of the accident. One of the things many "TBI survivors" share in common is that they have no memory of just what caused their injuries.

"It's as if it all happened so quickly that the brain didn't have time to store it," Ted says.

The hardest part of the recovery, Ashley says, was not so much the physical rehabilitation, but leaving her family and friends.

"I missed them a lot," she says, "because they're my strength."

She is quick to add, however, that she is uncomfortable with the way some of them behave toward her now.

"They act like they're walking on glass when they're around me." Ashley says. "A few months before the accident I lent a friend a copy of 'Pet's Dragon' for his daughter. When I told him I remembered lending him the tape, he was like 'Wow, really? He couldn't get off it."

For now, Ashley, whose parents are divorced, lives with her father in Stamford, spends her days going to Easter Seals and her nights getting together with friends for "Melrose Place" and "Beverly Hills 90210" parties.

She has an associate's degree in early child education from Norwalk Community-Technical College, but the accident has changed her career goals.

"Before I was going to open a day care center for children. Now I want to open one for disabled children," she says, adding that she'll return to college for physical therapy training when she feels ready.

" I think God kept me here for some reason, and that must be it." she says. "He kept me alive for some reason."