It is every parent’s worst nightmare, the phone call to say your child has been in a serious accident.

Lejoy Daniels had celebrated her birthday just the day before — August 18 — and was on the phone with her son Shakir for a couple of hours as he called her to wish her happy birthday. The next day another call came, this one from Shakir’s father Kevin Hodsoll, to inform her he had been in an accident and was in critical condition in hospital.

The next day she was on the plane to New Jersey and went straight to the hospital where Shakir was being treated for serious head injuries. She stayed in the United States for two months, leaving to return to Bermuda only two weeks before he was released from the second hospital, JFK Hospital, in late October.

“I was there for all of that and didn’t leave until I knew that he could eat,” Mrs Daniels explained on Tuesday, the day after returning to New Jersey to be with him for his surgery today.

“He called me on the morning of my birthday and I called him right back and we talked on the phone for about 2½, three hours. He doesn’t remember any of that. The day before the accident he voice-noted me and I kept all of them and played them over and over when he was in the hospital, torturing myself. It was the worst birthday ever, the day after.”

Mrs Daniels added: “I got home about seven that evening and Kevin called and I thought it was Shakir calling because he ‘WhatsApped’ me just prior to his accident and I didn’t respond. When I got home and saw the area code number I thought it was him but it was Kevin giving me the news. I just fell to my knees, it was horrific.

“I got hold of his godparents, Kevin and Lainie Small, where I’m staying now, and thankfully they live close to the hospital. They went straight to the hospital because Kevin needed the support.

“My husband Steven came up a few times and my daughter Stevona flew out with me the day after the accident. I didn’t sleep all night. Laini picked us up at the airport and drove us straight to the hospital and when I walked into the room I couldn’t believe my eyes. I went out into the family area and just screamed my lungs out, it was horrific, but he was fighting.”

Father Kevin received the news while driving home that evening when police pulled him over. “I was across town, doing some work at someone’s house and the lady asked me if I wanted the TV on so I was watching it on the news,” Hodsoll recalls.

“I was looking at an accident which is close to our house and didn’t take too much notice, but my son came to my mind because he delivers car parts in those areas. As I left there and was close to home the Police put the lights on me and I’m thinking they stopped me for my seat belt or running a stop sign.

‘They said to me ‘we stopped you because your son has been involved in a serious road accident’. I almost fainted but they said he was talking as they put him in the helicopter. The licence plate on his car goes back to my insurance and then the address, because they came right to the house. When I got home I was greeted by children and people were outside the house. One of his friends, who is from Barbados, came and took me to the hospital. When we got there he was still undergoing surgery. The doctor told me they cut a window in his skull to relieve the pressure and said that they would keep that in refrigeration until the swelling goes down.”

Hodsoll Sr was able to cope somewhat from his experience working as an orderly at King Edward Memorial before moving back to the US in the 1980s.

“I was told when working in the Bermuda hospital that the last thing to go from a person is their hearing so I was telling family members at his bedside not to be negative,” he said. “When I first came out here I worked in a hospital in Summit, New Jersey, as an orthopaedic technician, in emergency and also dealing with people going through trauma, which is what my son is going through right now.

“We were all praying at his bedside, talking to him all the time, giving him words of encouragement. We knew he wasn’t paralysed because he was moving from side to side on the bed. He had glass in his eye and they said he might lose his sight in the eye.”

Since he has been out of hospital, his mother has set up an account on the website, www.gofundme.com/helpshakir, where she has shared pictures of Shakir.

“I put up the site because we’re really having a hard time with the lawsuit and the insurance company and I asked him ‘if you mind me putting up these pictures because you haven’t seen them yet’ and when he saw the pictures he said ‘I’m OK with it considering how I look now, I’m truly blessed. God was watching over me’.”

Shakir keeps in constant contact with his mother.

“He gets down when seeing the bills coming in and plus his voice is not where it should be,” she said. “His father has been wonderful with him and they have bonded very well. Shakir has a five-year-old son who lives in Maryland and will be coming to be with him after the surgery.”