Shock Recovery

Christa Pike woke up. Six days after her execution failed, the Tennessee death row inmate is conscious and talking, her attorneys told reporters Wednesday.

Doctors had considered her brain dead within hours of the attempt. Then, this week, she opened her eyes. Nobody expected it, not her doctors, not her lawyers, BBC News reported.

Attorneys Luke Ihnen and Randy Spivey told reporters Pike is now being treated at a hospital and is expected to recover. Her longer-term future remains uncertain, BBC News reported.

A Tennessee judge ordered the state Wednesday to preserve the broadest possible range of evidence tied to the failed execution, a ruling Pike's legal team won at an emergency hearing held earlier that same day, according to BBC News and NBC News.

Far from over. That's how BBC correspondent Gary O'Donoghue described the fight over her case. Both the evidence order and her shifting medical condition will likely shape what comes next, he said.

The order covers records and physical evidence from the execution itself. State officials haven't detailed that evidence publicly. Still, it's a win for Pike's side, even with the larger legal questions unresolved.

NBC News reported that the failed execution has set off growing fallout across Tennessee, with officials now facing new questions about how the procedure was carried out and why it didn't go as planned.

Ihnen and Spivey laid out the timeline at a news conference after Wednesday's hearing. Pike's condition, they said, has changed fast. No date has been set for her next court appearance.

The attorneys vowed to keep pressing her case and said they'd keep the public updated on her medical progress, NBC News reported. Preserving the evidence now, they said, is critical to eventually answering what caused the execution to fail.

Unconscious one week. Awake and talking the next.

"She woke up to the shock of everyone," Ihnen and Spivey told reporters, according to NBC News.