Madeline Johnson of Bayville said she couldn't imagine a better Christmas present: On Sunday, her daughter Ariel wiped her face with a washcloth and combed her hair.

"It was like a miracle," Johnson said, struggling to express the momentousness of the small gestures. "I had really started to think it might be as good as it gets. I felt so depressed."

Ariel, a 17-year-old senior at Locust Valley High School, has been in a coma in the pediatric intensive care unit at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow since Dec. 13. On that stormy day, the cheerleader was driving to school around noon after eating lunch at home when she apparently skidded across the road and slammed into a truck, then into a pole, her mother said.

In what Johnson describes as a series of miracles, first, an off-duty emergency medical technician stopped and made sure she didn't choke to death on her own vomit.

Then, she was taken to NUMC's trauma unit. The doctors immediately recognized the seriousness of Ariel's head injury and called Dr. Salvatore Insinga, a neurosurgeon who just happened to be in the operating room finishing up another procedure.

Time plays a "big role" in brain damage following an injury, Insinga said. "Any delay in these matters means a bigger sacrifice of neurologic function," he said. The neurosurgeon and his team of three doctors and two nurses spent the next 3 1/2 hours operating on Ariel, taking out a blood clot and temporarily removing part of her skull to relieve the pressure on her swelling brain - the major cause of long-term damage.

Next came around-the-clock care by intensive care doctors and nurses, all of whom Johnson praised.

"I have never seen so much love and caring," she said.

Dr. Peter Ciminera, director of the pediatric intensive care unit, was cautious but optimistic about Ariel's recovery.

"She has come around pretty fast, which is good," he said.

Although sedated and still in a coma, in response to a nurse's request, Ariel on Sunday brushed her hair and washed her face with a washcloth. She then went on to repeat the same feats for her mother - and she even applied some lip balm to her lips.

Ariel, who her mother describes as "vivacious ... a fabulous kid," has made such good progress that Wednesday, she is to be transferred to Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Center in Manhattan.

Ciminera said that as her brain continues to heal over the next few weeks, she will likely come completely out of her coma.

In the meantime, Johnson said she has been taking pictures with her cell phone to one day show her daughter. "I know she'll want to know what happened to her," she said.