By Carolyn Thompson 
The  Associated Press

AP Photo/Don Heupel Linda Herbert holds her husband Don's Buffalo Fire Department helmet last month at her home.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Firefighters waited in the hospital's hallways, the campfire smell of their last call still heavy on their turnout gear. Word had spread quickly among the Buffalo department's ranks. Donny Herbert wasn't doing well.

The fire commissioner had been by to see the friend who'd nearly died in a roof collapse that robbed his brain of oxygen. Fire trucks were parked under a winter sky outside.

It was Feb. 21, 2006, but as Linda Herbert watched her husband slip away, it was as if the sun was finally setting on a day that dawned more than 10 years earlier.

On Dec. 29, 1995, Donald Herbert was without air for more than six minutes when he was trapped in the attic of a burning house. Back then, there had been the same hospital vigil after colleagues pulled him from the rubble and rushed him through slushy snow to an ambulance.

Herbert survived, but barely. For most of the next 9 1/2 years, he was minimally conscious, unaware of his surroundings and unable to communicate.

Until one day. A single day 10 months earlier that was letting Linda Herbert say goodbye now.

That was when her husband suddenly awoke.

"Where's Linda?" he'd asked.

It appeared an experimental combination of brain-stimulating drugs begun two years earlier had sparked something.

Spoke nearly nonstop
For 16 wondrous hours, Donald Herbert spoke nearly nonstop, catching up with the four sons who had become men while he slept, and the wife and fire department friends who prayed so long for this very chance.

For the rest of his life, Donald Herbert would never have another day like that one.

In the next weeks and months there were hopeful and happy moments, Herbert, though virtually blind, threw footballs with his sons from his wheelchair, but none came close to that initial burst of lucidity.

All too soon, Herbert was back to the "minimally conscious state" that had defined him before. And in under a year, there was pneumonia and a deadly 105.6-degree fever. He was buried Feb. 26, 2006.

In a way it seems cruel, for a family to be robbed of so much for nearly 10 years, only to be teased with a single day of what ifs.

Linda Herbert doesn't see it that way.

For her, that day, April 30, 2005, was a gift that continues to reveal itself. In her sons, who were brought closer together. In the ever present reminder not to waste precious time. In the ability to laugh off things that would have bothered her before.

But mostly, in the peace of mind that day delivered to all the family: To Donald Herbert, who came back long enough to see that his wife and sons were OK; to the family, who learned that he wasn't suffering, and didn't remember the accident, but had not forgotten them. In the unspoken permission the father gave his family to move on with their lives.

Donald Jr., Patrick, Thomas and Nicholas were 14, 13, 11 and 3 years old when their father was hurt. They are 26, 25, 23 and 15 now.

It had been tough on the boys, their mother said, the years of "How are you, Dad?" met by silence.

"Once he did start talking, it just brought a lot of joy to the kids," Linda Herbert said.

After the fire, she said, "They didn't smile. We functioned as a family, we went on ... but we never really had that joy again. That was taken from the boys."

When he woke up, the older boys introduced their girlfriends and shared hunting stories. Nicholas had his first real conversation with his dad.

"His kids had that beautiful time ... to say, 'This is what we did all those years, dad. We never gave mom trouble, we went to school, we went to college, we're all doing fine,"' Linda Herbert said, "'We're healthy, we're together' ... They told him so much."

Richard Blake, Linda's cousin, chronicled the family's experience in a new book, "The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up" (Harmony Books, 246 pages, $23).

"In time, they did not view this as a bad thing. They were grateful that they were able to reconnect and I think, in a way, Don was able to let go," Blake said by phone from New York City.

The book offers a look inside Herbert's room at the nursing facility as the overwhelmed firefighter, able to recognize people by their voices, learned he had been "gone" for 10 years:

"We've been here for you the whole time," (Linda) said.

"How old am I?"

"Forty-three," Linda said.

"Oh, my God," Donny said. He was smiling through his tears now.

Worldwide interest
Linda Herbert has been reluctant to talk publicly about that remarkable time, but in her south Buffalo home on a recent morning, after finishing crossing guard duties at a nearby elementary school, she remained in awe of the worldwide interest her family's story had generated. Calls from around the globe poured into her home.

A large portrait of her husband, smiling from his wheelchair and surrounded by his sons, hangs on a kitchen wall. It was taken on her husband's last birthday, May 7, 2005, a week after he'd begun to talk. It had been years since her four sons had been so closely bonded.

Their mother would observe that bond again months later in the hospital room, where they surrounded their father as he lay dying.

"They were all there. They were all able to talk to him, hold him, even though he was unresponsive," Linda said. "They were the ones that said, 'Dad, it's enough. We're going to be OK, don't worry about it."'

"I always looked at them as, these are my kids,"' Linda said. "But they had really grown into men and I thought, they are very good kids and Don had nothing to worry about and he knew that."

Linda Herbert hopes telling her story will draw attention to brain injuries, offering hope and underlining the need for medical advances and advice for caregivers. She'd had to spend hours at the library, scraping for what little information was available.

Her husband's turnaround came after a doctor, a rehabilitation specialist named Jamil Ahmed, began experimenting with a mixture of drugs usually used to treat Parkinson's disease, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But before doctors had a chance to fully explore the drugs' effects, Herbert fell from his bed at the nursing facility and suffered bleeding on his brain that severely slowed his progress.

While the medicine, which is still being studied, may have been a trigger, many have suggested Father Nelson Baker, a local priest up for sainthood, intervened. The awakening came in a nursing facility named after the late priest, who died in 1936.

"I still say it was Don's will more than anything else," Linda Herbert said. "I really believe that he had enough will to break out of that for that moment in time.

"He sort of came to check in on us, make sure we were all behaving. And if we weren't," she said laughing, "he probably would have stuck around."