Upon entering John's hospital room, a distraught Joyce began to pray. Within moments, as the staff in the room told Today, his heart began to beat again. And within 48 hours, he had opened his eyes and was responding to the doctor's questions.
The doctors were mostly baffled as to how John survived, with brain function intact. Dr. Jeremy Garrett told the Daily News that the only medical explanation was, ironically, the freezing temperatures of the water.
"For John's brain to have gotten cold to be protected from the lack of blood flow and the lack of oxygen really is a miracle in itself, if that did anything here."
The Smiths, at least, believe it to have been a miracle from God. John had to undergo physical therapy to regain full function in his hands and suffered from a persistent cough for some weeks after the ordeal. In 2017, Joyce published The Impossible: The Miraculous Story of a Mother's Love and Her Son's Resurrection, a memoir based on the experience, which was then optioned for the film that would become Breakthrough.
"There's no really any explanation but how God wanted me to live for a reason so I'm alive now," John told Today at the time.