LEWISTON – Confined to a hospital bed far from home, what Kasha Dubois misses the most is the early morning paper route. She misses being outside when the sun rises and competing with her family to see who can get the papers delivered the quickest.

One week ago, the 15-year-old was pinned beneath a car after she was knocked off her bicycle and run over on East Avenue. It took a dozen rescuers to free her, and Kasha was left with a broken pelvis, broken ribs, a spinal injury, possible neurological damage and a third-degree burn that wraps around from her stomach to her back.

“She remembers the impact,” said Laura Pelletier, Kasha’s mother. “She doesn’t really remember how it happened.”

Kasha has had multiple surgeries at Maine Medical Center in Portland, where her parents say she has good days and bad days.

“She has been in good spirits right up until yesterday,” Don Edwards, Kasha’s father, said Wednesday afternoon. “She was really down and it’s heart-wrenching to see her like that. She had a really bad day and she cried a lot. She wants to be home.”

When the teenager might be home, or back in a local hospital, has not even been discussed.

“I was hoping they might move her back to Lewiston soon,” said Pelletier. “But she’s not ready for that yet.”

Kasha faces months of physical therapy. The burns she suffered when she was trapped beneath the Buick damaged nerves and muscles.

Those injuries will likely leave scarring to her front and back.

Police who talked to Kasha while she was stuck beneath the car say the teenager was conscious throughout the rescue. They recall that she was brave, providing them with information and even making a joke about the ordeal.

Kasha’s parents say that, for the most part, that spunkiness has continued even as she is being assessed, prodded and wheeled into surgery at the Portland hospital.

“She’s been a trouper, that’s for sure,” her mother said. “She became really depressed yesterday, but she knows we’re there for her.”

At MMC, neurologists are being called in to determine the extent of injuries to Kasha’s head and spine. She cannot hear out of one ear, and her right eye is turned inward. Physical therapy to help with injuries to the arms, legs, ribs and torso is expected to begin immediately.

After she’s released from the hospital, Kasha’s recovery will take months.

“It’s going to be a long haul,” her father said. “We need to get ramps and all of that at home. I have no idea where she’ll sleep. She’s definitely not going to be able to climb the stairs.”

Kasha’s parents look tired. Both work for the Sun Journal, Edwards as a paper carrier, Pelletier as a field representative. These days, they get up before dawn, get papers delivered, get Edwards’ 14-year-old son Tanner off to school, and then make plans to travel to Portland.

In better days, Kasha joined the family during the early morning deliveries. Unlike some teenagers, the 15-year-old thrived on the early hour.

“She loves getting up and doing it,” Edwards said. “It’s one of the things she misses the most. She wants to get back to it as soon as she can. She said she’ll sit in the back and just bag papers if she has to.”

“She loves to get her father going,” Pelletier said. “She’ll come home and say, ‘I ran circles around daddy today.'”

Kasha’s parents don’t talk at all about the financial strain of the situation, though medical bills will be hefty. There has been talk of a fund being set up to help Kasha but no such fund existed by Wednesday.

The family is concentrating on Kasha’s health and the people who saved her – the police officers, firefighters, rescue crews, and local people who stopped at the scene to help free the girl with car jacks and cement blocks ripped from a retaining wall.

“I don’t know everyone that helped,” Pelletier said. “But I want to thank them all. There just aren’t enough words to say it. They were just awesome. You don’t realize there are people like that until something like this happens.”

Pelletier said the Sun Journal has also treated her well since the ordeal, particularly circulation manager Mike Theriault, who has been in constant contact with the family since last Friday.

“Everyone has been so great,” she said.

And while it will be a tough summer for the family, financially and emotionally, they are not ignorant to the notion that it could have been much worse.

“She has some guardian angels out there,” Pelletier said. “She’s a lucky girl.”