Everyone Rooting for Spirited Boy in a Coma

David and Victoria Zucker have no way to tell whether their comatose son can hear them. Just in case, Brandon’s parents have been at his bedside at UCI Medical Center in Orange almost constantly since Friday night, when the 4-year-old was critically injured on Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin ride at Disneyland.

They hold his hand. They kiss him. And, constantly, they tell him how much they love him, said Brandon’s doctor, trauma surgeon Marianne Cinat.

But because he is hooked up to machines that help him breathe and monitor his organ functions, his parents cannot take his 45-pound body, covered with bruises, into their arms.

On Monday morning, a few hours before Brandon underwent surgery a second time, hospital officials listened to David Zucker describe his son’s habit of speeding around his northern Los Angeles County neighborhood on his scooter, and how much the boy loves to swim. The family’s stunned neighbors described Brandon as a lively little guy who huddles in secret hiding places with his older brother and a friend, and loves to build with Lego blocks.

Doctors say it will be months before Brandon can pursue those activities again--if ever.

The accident left him pinned in a sitting position beneath the amusement car ride, bent at the waist with the vehicle on his back, according to Anaheim paramedics’ reports. His spleen, liver, diaphragm and pelvis were damaged, and his left lung collapsed.

Thankfully, doctors say, there are no signs of head injury, but Cinat said she doesn’t know yet whether Brandon was deprived of oxygen long enough to suffer brain damage or injury to other organs.

Paramedics said he was not breathing when they arrived Friday. They resuscitated him, and he entered the emergency room with a weak pulse in a shock-induced coma, Cinat said.

Brandon’s coma is now drug-induced, with a cocktail of muscle relaxants, painkillers and amnesia-producing sedatives that doctors say will keep him quiet and give his body a chance to recover.

Cinat tells his parents to keep talking to him.

“We say, ‘Even though he’s on those medications, assume he can hear you.’ ” she said.

In a written statement released Monday, the parents said, in part, “We believe our strong faith in God and the UCI doctors will help Brandon recover from his injuries.”

On Monday, Cinat asked hospital officials to show her a photo of Brandon that had been released to the news media, noting that she had seen only a patient covered with bruises and swelling, caused by the surgery as well.

The surgeon smiled when she saw the impish grin in the photo.

In the Zuckers’ American Beauty Condominium complex in Canyon Country, neighbors said they were praying for Brandon’s recovery. They described him as a delightful and social boy from a caring family who loves to play with other children.

Augusto Rodriguez, whose daughter Denisse is a playmate of Brandon’s, described the family as “very nice.”

Denisse said she enjoys playing with Brandon and his older brother Nicholas on their scooters. She said the three of them like to go to a “secret laboratory,” an alcove under a neighbor’s balcony and behind a bush.

“We come up here and play. When we stop playing, we go to his house and play with Legos,” Denisse said.

Her father said he was saddened and horrified to hear of Brandon’s accident. “It’s such a shock to hear that something like that would happen to someone, to a little guy that you know from your neighborhood,” he said.

Another neighbor, James Barger, said he knows the Zuckers only in passing. It was in a short conversation with Victoria Zucker on Sunday night, when she had stopped at home briefly, that Barger learned that his young neighbor was the child he had heard about on the news.

“She was pretty upset,” Barger said. “She was just telling me about it. He went under the ride, or fell from it.”

Cindy Arnold, another neighbor, said the family moved in about two years ago and that Brandon and his brother love to wave to passersby from their balcony.

“He’s a cute little kid--rambunctious, but nice,” she said.

That same rambunctiousness may help save Brandon’s life, his doctor said Monday.

“From Friday until now . . . he’s shown he’s a fighter,” said Cinat. “I’m optimistic that he’s going to survive.”

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Times staff writer Carol Chambers and correspondent Theresa Moreau contributed to this report.