The Hardest Part

Alice Hershey was injured on her bike.

The hardest part, her father was saying, is that she's always been so vibrant. "The connector," her friend Anneliese calls her. Alice Hershey, 29, has always been the connector, the one to instigate various outings in the city, making sure everyone was involved, flashing that roar of a smile.

You can see a restlessness beginning to emerge, now that the pain meds have been dialed down and the coma has given her brain seven weeks to heal. She's at Bryn Mawr Rehab, and a swirl of activity surrounds her as she curl in her bed. Her eyes are open. It is not clear what she registers.

Her family and an incredible community of friends - more than 850 on Facebook - have gathered around this 2002 Swarthmore grad to help pull through. There's hope, there's realism, often in the same breath. There really aren't many answers yet. She was hit by an SUV while she pedaled her bicycle through a red light on August 14. So many people are pulling for her. Today's metro column.

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About Metro Mashup

Metro columnist Karen Heller has been an Inquirer staff writer since 1986. She has won national, state and local awards for feature writing, investigative reporting and criticism, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. E-mail Karen here; read her columns here.

An award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Annette John-Hall’s twice weekly metro columns always illuminate. Her topics and storytelling challenge readers to reflect on their own perceptions, to turn off the auto response and forge a different kind of conversation. She has been nominated twice by the Inquirer for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. E-mail Annette here; read her columns here.

Kevin Riordan’s daily newspaper byline debuted in 1972, when he was a child prodigy. He got his first real newspaper job four years later, and joined the Inquirer in 2010. A native of western Massachusetts, he lives in Haddon Heights, NJ. E-mail Kevin here; read his columns here.

Since joining The Inquirer as a staff writer in 1988, Daniel Rubin has reported from 27 countries, but most of them were small. He's a metro columnist and has been the European Correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. For two years he sat at home and wrote Blinq, the paper's first daily blog. Dan began newspaper work in Norfolk and Louisville, Ky., after getting his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University. He has lived in all four commonwealths, most recently in Pennsylvania. He teaches urban journalism at the University of Pennsylvania. E-mail Daniel here; read his columns here.

Monica Yant Kinney joined the Inquirer as a suburban reporter in 1996, moved to the City Hall Bureau two years later and was named a metro columnist in 2001 at the age of 30. As a columnist, Kinney speaks to, and for, the curious and infuriated masses, writing often about gun violence, casinos, politics, pop culture and parenting. She logs so many miles reporting in the city, suburbs and South Jersey, she finally bought a Prius. E-mail Monica here; read her columns here.

Visit Blinq 1.0 here.

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