30. Against All Odds

For Cynthia Jay-Brennan, life is all about the odds. They worked for her when she pulled the handle on a Las Vegas slot machine and, like magic, won a record $35 million jackpot. She married her boyfriend and they made plans to travel the world. Then life's fortune turned against her.

Only weeks after winning, a drunken driver with 16 prior arrests slammed into her car. The collision killed her sister, Lela Jay, and shattered Jay-Brennan's spine.

"It's great odds I won. It's great odds I got in this accident and lived," said the Las Vegas resident. "I'm hoping the odds are that I'm going to get better and I'll walk again."

Jay-Brennan, 38, is paralyzed below the upper chest. After months of painful therapy, she has learned to maneuver her electric wheelchair with a joystick.

But the once fiercely independent cocktail waitress cannot feed herself, comb her blond hair or put on makeup. Raising her arm high enough to turn on a light switch is a battle of will.

"I would give everything back to go back to my regular job and be able to walk around," she said. "I'd give every cent I have."

Hers is not just a story of how quickly life can change. It is also a story of love and hope.

Cynthia Jay grew up with five sisters and three brothers in Sacramento. She moved to Las Vegas, got a job as a cocktail waitress and fell in love with Terry Brennan, a bartender at the Monte Carlo casino where she worked.

On January 26 of last year, she and family members went out on the town to celebrate the birthday of Brennan's mother. Before she left home for the evening, she remembers joking to her mother, "I'm going to win the Megabucks tonight."

Lightning struck at the Desert Inn casino. On her ninth pull, the trio of Megabucks symbols came to rest in a neat row.

For a few seconds, it seemed like minutes, she said, there were no sirens, no bells. Then the lights flashed and she threw her arms into the air and collapsed back into her chair.

"I didn't believe it," she said of the $34 959 458.56 jackpot, the world's largest slot machine pay-out.

Cynthia Jay wed Brennan less than two weeks later. Between planning for the wedding and meeting with financial advisers and accountants they had little time to enjoy the money. They made plans to honeymoon at a beach somewhere, just about any would do, and start a family.

Then came March 11.

On that night, Jay-Brennan and her sister were out again with family members. The group went to a casino but decided to go to another one a short distance away. Jay-Brennan and her sister piled into Jay-Brennan's 1999 Chevrolet and were stopped at a red light.

"The last thing I remember was telling Lela how happy I was," she recalled. "I don't remember the accident. They said he was going at least 51 mph and he never hit the brakes."

"He" is Clark Morse, a 59-year-old chronic drunken driver with a revoked license who was behind the wheel of his mother's Ford Explorer.

Lela Anne Jay, 45, died at the scene. The impact broke the fifth vertebrae in Jay-Brennan's spine. Morse received a cut on the nose.

Jay-Brennan spent 10 days in a Las Vegas hospital and four months at a center in Denver that specializes in spinal cord injuries. Doctors told her she'll never walk again.

Through it all, Brennan has been by her side. "The accident doesn't change the way I feel about her," he said.

Jay-Brennan calls her husband "the main reason I made it." Brennan cooks, cleans, does the dishes and picks up the mail. Each night, he wakes three to five times to move her to help her circulation, to put covers on her when she's cold and to remove them when she's hot.

And he still works as a bartender at the Monte Carlo.

"I think it's the only normal thing left," Jay-Brennan said. "It's the only part of our lives that is exactly the same."

Jay-Brennan wonders if there's a reason she won the jackpot, to help her pay medical bills and for quality care such as the care-worker who comes each day to help her with her personal needs.

Meanwhile, Jay-Brennan hasn't given up hope for a recovery. She spends four days a week undergoing painful physical therapy. She wants to be in the best shape possible in case of a medical breakthrough that could allow her to walk again.

"My arms and my shoulders are all they say I'll ever move," she said. "I don't believe it."