Norwich — Terell Wilson had a busy summer planned, with a July 14 wedding in the works and a budding career as a financial adviser.

But life’s plans will be put on hold for at least a month as surgeons work to put Wilson’s body back together following a head-on collision early Saturday morning in Milford.

A wrong-way driver on Interstate 95 near Exit 36 crashed into Wilson’s Chrysler as he was heading home from a late event.

Wilson, 24, who served one term on the Norwich City Council and led the NAACP state Youth and College Council for five years, was trapped in the vehicle with the engine on fire, his mother, Debra Wilson, said.

A truck driver stopped and put out the fire with an extinguisher, and emergency responders arrived quickly thereafter to extricate him from the wreck and administer life-saving care before he was transported by ambulance to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

The driver of the wrong-way vehicle, Shivam Patel, 22, of West Haven also had to be extricated from his vehicle and was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Wilson suffered a broken pelvis, two broken ankles, one of them severely, a broken femur and collapsed lungs, his mother said.

Wilson can speak with effort, she said, but his doctors want him to remain silent to allow his lungs to heal.

He is on a ventilator, and the surgeon had to postpone an operation to insert a rod into his broken leg when his lungs collapsed.

Debra Wilson said her son's right ankle will need “at least eight surgeries” to repair all the damage.

It’s unknown when he will be able to return to work at Northwestern Mutual as a financial adviser, she said.

“He’ll be in the hospital at least a month,” Debra Wilson said. “He’s engaged to be married on July 14. We're really just trying to get him stable. We might have to postpone (the wedding), because he's going to have to have extensive rehab.”

c.bessette@theday.com