'I just want to hear her voice again,' says crash victim's mom

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A Bathurst woman who survived a crash last month that killed three people remains in intensive care in a Moncton hospital.

“We are not out of the woods,” Melanie Mercier, mother of Alexandra Mallais, said in an interview.

Mallais, 22, was a passenger in a car that collided head-on with an SUV in the Wheeler Boulevard traffic circle in Dieppe around 1:30 a.m. on March 31. According to a news release from RCMP, a 20-year-old woman, a 23-year-old man and a 24-year-old man who were in the car died at the scene.

The driver and three passengers of the SUV were treated for minor injuries.

Mercier said the family has learned few details about the crash.

“The only thing we know is the ambulance was there in not even one minute and she was in pretty bad shape. She was the only survivor in the vehicle,” she said.

Mercier said her daughter’s injuries include losing vision in her left eye, a broken wrist, a broken jaw, and every bone in her face was broken. She said Mallais also underwent emergency surgery to drain blood from her head when she arrived at the hospital.

“Right now, she is still in a semi-coma and she will need more surgery,” she said.

Mercier said the family has received an incredible amount of support from New Brunswickers since the crash. On Saturday, Recyclage Chaleur is hosting a bottle drive to raise funds for the family; donations are being collected at Simply For Life in Campbellton; and as of Thursday, a GoFundMe campaign had raised $12,893 of its $15,000 goal.

Mercier said the money will pay for travel between her home in Campbellton and the hospital, accommodations, and helping Mallais through follow-up treatments and rehabilitation. Mercier has taken a leave of absence from work to be at her daughter’s side.

“At times I feel so helpless watching my child fight her way back to us. All I want to do is remain by her side until she is able to speak to me again,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page on April 6.

“I just want to hear her voice again so bad.”

Mercier wrote that she’s trying to remain optimistic but things came into perspective when she spoke with a doctor last week.

“I pulled him aside to thank him for saving my daughter’s life. He immediately countered with ‘I haven’t saved her yet,'” she wrote.

“At that moment, I realized that this battle is going to be a long, hard-fought one.”