Her daughter was high-risk. Now she has coronavirus and is in a coma.

For Melanie Ollick Komninos, the phone call was nothing short of a nightmare.

A nurse who had been in her home had potentially exposed her daughter to the coronavirus.

Her daughter, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Who receives nourishment from a tube in her abdomen. Who suffers from chronic lung infections.

Now, Komninos spends every minute of the day with Zoey in quarantine at Hackensack University Medical Center’s pediatric intensive care unit, communicating with nurses through a glass window.

When she cries, it’s hard to keep her face mask dry. Her daughter is on a ventilator, in an induced coma.

“It’s terrible to see your child like this," she tells NJ Advance Media.

Komninos and her husband, Jimmy, pulled Zoey, 14, out of school two years ago. Her immune system was just too weak to face the risk of daily contact with other students.

Then, a global pandemic showed up at their New Milford doorstep.

The exposed nurse — one in a group that provides round-the-clock home care for Zoey — had worked closely with a doctor who tested positive for the coronavirus.

When her family got the call, Zoey had an elevated temperature, but no other symptoms. A doctor instructed the family to contact Hackensack University Medical Center and bring her to the emergency room. It was Thursday. By Friday, they had the result — Zoey tested positive for the coronavirus.

“No!" Komninos said. “F**k!”

‘No time to think or plan’

When hospital staff enter Zoey’s room at HUMC, they wear double masks, hair covers, face shields, goggles, gowns and double or triple gloves.

Komninos says the rules for taking precautions change as time goes on, but she’s fearful of how callous people in the outside world can be — how some still don’t think they need to stay home or protect themselves.

When people say that only those 60 and older need to be careful, or only high-risk people should be worried, Komninos is quick to reply.

“Everyone’s ‘only’ is my everything," she says.

As Zoey was admitted to the hospital, in addition to the fever, her oxygen was low. She started wheezing.

“They didn’t know which way she was going so that’s why they sedated and paralyzed her,” says Komninos, 47.

From the quarantine room with Zoey, she posts #ZoeyStrong updates about her daughter’s condition on Facebook.

Komninos doesn’t know what will happen if she develops symptoms herself.

“Yesterday I struggled thinking, 'What if I get ill and need to leave?’” Komninos says. "Would they let me back? Would I see my husband and other two children? Everything was going through my head. Then everything with Zoey spiraled and she needed the breathing tube, central line, sedation and paralytic. And my focus was back.”

Since Komninos cannot leave the quarantine room for any reason, when doctors inserted the breathing tube and central line for Zoey, she took refuge in the bathroom.

“It was too much,” she says. “I didn’t want to risk passing out and hitting my head.”

Back at home in New Milford, Jimmy Komninos is under a 14-day quarantine with their other children, Dimitri, 12, and Hailey, 16. Neither of the children has disabilities and so far they don’t have symptoms, so they aren’t getting tested.

The diner where Jimmy, 49, works as a manager is closed. Melanie, who works in insurance, had moved her office home to practice social distancing when she got the news Zoey had been exposed.

“I am using my emergency time," she says. “Then my vacation time. And then who knows. We have to do unemployment for Jimmy maybe. Everything was so quick. No time to think or plan."

‘You just keep moving forward’

Zoey does not walk and is nonverbal, but can make sounds and communicate. Melanie shared a video on Facebook from when she was alert. Even though her daughter is now in a coma, she has been playing calming music through the TV, which displays an image of a serene waterfall.

For Melanie, assurances come in the form of check-ins from nurses, who watch Zoey’s monitor through the window. One wrote “love you all!” on the glass. They can hear Melanie through the video for Zoey’s EEG, which tracks the electrical activity in her brain.

Moments of confusion arrive with the beeps of alarms from machines in the room.

Zoey is prone to aspiration pneumonia. Fluid — including Zoey’s own saliva — collects in her lungs, in addition to pseudomonas bacteria that cause infection. She was on the combination of drugs touted by President Donald Trump — the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, or Plaquenil, and the antibiotic azithromycin — until doctors decided the benefits would not outweigh the risk of side effects for a patient on a ventilator.

Still, Melanie stays positive because she doesn’t have a choice.

“If I think about it and I get too much sympathy from people, it gets emotional," she says. "You can’t think that way, you just have to do whatever it takes. You just keep moving forward.”

She’s been doing much the same for 14 years, diagnosis after diagnosis. As a baby, Zoey had trouble swallowing and breathing at the same time. At five months, she was diagnosed with infantile spasms. At nine months, she had a G-tube, or gastrostomy tube, inserted to deliver nutrition to her stomach.

At 3, Zoey was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a motor disability. In 2012: asthma and lung issues.

Due to stomach sensitivity, Zoey can only receive nutrition through a special formula, and there was none at the hospital. Melanie put out a call on Facebook to ask someone to pick cans up from her home and bring them to the hospital.

Danielle LoPorto and her husband, Joe, came to the rescue. They’ve also collected food donations.

“I just made a run for the family now to deliver some paperwork for them," LoPorto said Tuesday. “They’re wonderful people and are always the first in their community to help others out.”

‘A village’ apart but together

If there is anything that helps take some of the enormous pressure off the Komninos family, it is their neighbors in New Milford and surrounding towns.

“Zoey has a village,” Melanie says. Donna Tartini, her friend from high school, started a GoFundMe page for Zoey.

“I’ve never met Zoey before," she says. “My heart broke when I saw that little girl in the video. I just pray that she recovers from this, I really do. I feel like I know her. I hope that when this is over I get to meet her.”

Brooke DelVecchio, who coaches Zoey’s brother Dimitri in soccer, set up a Meal Train page where people can volunteer to deliver meals to Jimmy and the kids at home via contact-free drop-off.

“It’s been an amazing response," says DelVecchio, who works as a nurse for a high-risk population at a senior home. “I’ve actually teared up thinking about it."

Komninos doesn’t know how long they’ll be at the hospital, spending day and night with Zoey unconscious.

She asked the doctor, who said the journey ahead would likely be a “roller coaster."

“It’s the unknown,” Komninos says. “We can only have hope and pray that she will be a survivor.”

More: GoFundMe for Zoey Komninos: gofundme.com/f/zoeys-fund-raiser. Meal Train for the Komninos family.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

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