MOSES LAKE - Ashton Jenkins turns nine next Monday, a birthday he might have missed out on were it not for his strength and hundreds of prayerful supporters.

This past spring the Moses Lake boy suffered a severe head injury and other wounds when riding as a passenger on an ATV near Lind. The vehicle tipped backward as it climbed a steep embankment, crushing him beneath its weight.

Doctors initially said Ashton would need to overcome some pretty long odds to make it through the first three days following the crash, which left him with a bi-lateral crushed skull and a compound-fractured left femur according to his stepmom, Winter Jenkins.

Although a neurosurgeon was able to operate, a softball-sized indentation in Ashton's skull buried a piece of bone in his brain that couldn't safely be removed without risking death.

"When we got him to Sacred Heart in Spokane they said they couldn't fix the head because there was no way to get the bone out without having him bleed to death," she said. "They said, 'It's up to him now, there's nothing more we can do at this point.'"

Ashton's mom, Lindsay Jenkins-Downs, said when doctors told her they didn't think her son had much of a chance of surviving without severe brain damage. She felt blank at first.

It was the weekend of Mother's Day.

"It's one of those things you see in movies and never think it's going to happen to you until it does," she said. "I felt helpless because parents are supposed to make everything better and I couldn't do anything but sit and wait."

Day three passed and the eight-year-old was still alive. Doctors fixed the compound fracture in his leg and removed fluid from his right lung after he came down with pneumonia. At one point Ashton was hooked up to 27 different machines, Jenkins said.

As his condition began to stabilize, Ashton was moved from the Intensive Care Unit to a quieter ward, where doctors kept him in an induced coma to protect his fragile brain from any light or noise that might have caused a catastrophic, potentially deadly stroke.

His room filled up with stuffed animals and Lego's, Jenkins said; presents delivered by well-wishers from all over the place. A neighbor who barely knew the family offered to mow their lawn while they were away, and Witney Wytko, Ashton's second grade teacher at Knolls Vista Elementary School, organized a series of "get well" art projects.

A family friend set up a Facebook page, "Prayers for Ash," and hundreds of people all over the country began adding Ashton to their prayer lists.

Then, after nearly three weeks, doctors determined Ashton was ready to wake up and took him off the paralytic medication.

"When he woke up he asked how long he'd been here and we told him. He sat up and said, 'We're going home in two hours,'" Jenkins said. "He's a miracle. We really believe all those prayers saved him."

But before he could go home Ashton still faced weeks of intensive occupational therapy, speech therapy, recreational therapy and more. He was confined to a wheelchair with a brace on his leg, and struggled to fight through short-term memory loss and a lack of focus.

Despite this, the first thing Ashton wanted to do once he finally arrived home was help out in the shop, according to his dad, Aaron Jenkins, owner of The Jenkins Family Auto Barn.

"The day he came home he said, 'Aren't we going to work?'" Aaron Jenkins said. "He helped put a radiator in a truck his first day back. He's a little superman."

In July, Ashton completed his fifth and final surgery, an operation to take the hardware out of his leg. Winter Jenkins said although he walks with a slight limp and has to avoid contact sports due to the piece of bone still lodged in his brain, Ashton is the same kid he's always been.

"He's the type of child that when he walks in a room you know he's there - very boisterous," she said. "We were afraid he'd lose that but he hasn't."

Ashton, who missed the tail end of last school year, has since caught up and gets great grades, Jenkins said.

Last week Ashton caught a ride to school in a fire truck, courtesy of the Moses Lake Fire Department and Wytko, who arranged the ride after learning it was something her former student had said he wanted to do while still in the hospital.

"It's just an incredible thing Ashton is with us," Wytko said.

Jenkins-Downs said her son's school has been incredibly supportive throughout the ordeal.

"It was really helpful that people cared," she said. "Witney (Wytko) was a big help."

Although her son will no longer be able to play football or realize his former dream of joining the Army someday, Jenkins-Downs said she's certain he'll find a new path for himself.

"He's an absolutely normal kid but he just can't do certain things his brothers can do. He understands it, but he's totally determined to do what he wants to do and be what he wants to be when he grows up," she said, laughing. "You can't stop him. He's eight years old so it's kind of hard."