MALE SPEAKER: A mother's worst fear.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: I received a phone call from my 15-year-old son frantic, couldn't quite understand him, told me to hurry up and get home, there'd been an accident.
MALE SPEAKER: An accident that would change Kirsten Bressler's life.
DENISE BORGSCHATZ: OK, tell me exactly what happened.
CALLER: I shot. I was shooting my ball and it richoceted off the target and hit my little brother.
DENISE BORGSCHATZ: Is he awake?
CALLER: Yeah.
OPERATOR: Is he breathing?
CALLER: Yes.
MALE SPEAKER: An eight-year-old boy shot with an arrow, a call emergency medical dispatcher, Denise Borgschatz unusual and unforgettable.
DENISE BORGSCHATZ: Emergency communications. Once I found out what part of the body it was that he was hit, I automatically auto-launched a helicopter.
MALE SPEAKER: Jessica Fite was a flight paramedic on that helicopter.
JESSICA FITE: For the rest of my career, I will never forget the sinking feeling I had in my stomach when we opened those ambulance doors. And here you see this little guy with an arrow sticking straight out of his chest.
MALE SPEAKER: That little guy was Curtis Bressler.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: I just kept telling him I loved him and that he was in very good care.
JESSICA FITE: It didn't even occur to us that this could be a spinal injury until somebody had said he's not moving from the waist down. And we verified that.
MALE SPEAKER: Mayo clinic's, Dr. Denise Klinkner, figured out why when Curtis arrived in the emergency department at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
DR. DENISE KLINKNER: He had missed a lot of very important structures here, but clearly had injured his spine.
MALE SPEAKER: Dr. Klinkner had to figure out how to remove it without causing any more damage.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: It's OK. I'm, like, he's with us because they told us that it had missed his pulmonary artery, his aorta, and his heart, which he would have bled out on the spot. And my husband and I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye to him by the time we got there. So I was very thankful and sad at the same time.
MALE SPEAKER: Curtis's mom waited for the right moment to tell him his fate that he was now a paraplegic.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: I said, you will be able to do everything everybody else does, you will just do it differently. I'm like you will be able to play basketball, you will be able to do everything anybody else does.
MALE SPEAKER: But the eight-year-old boy with the severed spine didn't believe the doctors that he'd never walk again.
CURTIS BRESSLER: Not true, I felt that way.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: As each tube came out of him, he got stronger.
MALE SPEAKER: He started rehab. Sensations and feelings started coming back. He was getting used to his wheelchair, but he wasn't satisfied. Then one day, he shocked his family and doctors.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: All of a sudden, he walked in to the room.
DR. DENISE KLINKNER: Sometimes we don't have explanations from a medical standpoint, but with this kind of outcome, I'm OK not having an explanation.
MALE SPEAKER: Curtis's progress continues to defy odds and explanation.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: He is now doing he'll heel, heel, and toe walking, tippy-toe walking and heal walking. And he jumped yesterday. And that brought tears to my eyes.
MALE SPEAKER: Roughly two months later, he's playing basketball exactly like everybody else.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: It's truly a miracle.
MALE SPEAKER: A miracle that inspires tears of joy from those who helped save Curtis.
DENISE BORGSCHATZ: It's amazing. I almost wanted to cry when I saw him walking. In this job, you have to believe there's miracles out there, I think.
JESSICA FITE: He is beyond lucky. I'm so grateful for him that it turned out the way it did.
KRISTEN BRESSLER: We knew he was something else, something bigger was happening, and he has truly amazed us, he continues to amaze us.
MALE SPEAKER: And an eight-year-old boy, who refused to believe he wouldn't walk, now looks forward to getting back to soccer and writing his family's John Deere tractor. He believes that one day, all of this will be nothing more than a--
CURTIS BRESSLER: Distant memory.