JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The tears flow less frequently now, though with no less force. A week ago, Mark Hamlin had only to think about Father's Day or his daughter's long-planned, now-postponed driver's test or her love for the pop group Hanson, and the tears would come.

Time, though, has brought strength. And as Mark Hamlin sits in an intensive-care ward with Megan, his daughter - 1,200 miles from home, only a few maddening feet from his embrace - he tries his best to pass some of that strength along to her.

"I keep telling her to fight," Hamlin, 45, said in a waiting room at Shands Jacksonville Hospital, down the hall from where his daughter, struck 11 days ago by a hit-and-run driver on a beach, lies in a coma.

"They think she can hear us, so I just keep telling her to be strong. I tell her, 'The doctors and nurse are good, but they can only do so much. They're going to need some help from you.' "

It's been a week and a half now since Mark Hamlin began this plaintive vigil, a week and a half since he received the phone call that parents dread: There's been an accident - a bad one.

His daughter, Megan, and her buddy, Jessica Rowen, both 16 and from Bucks County, had been sunbathing on a beach outside Jacksonville when they were hit by someone driving a red sports utility vehicle. Someone who ran over them both - squarely over their heads - and kept on going.

Both girls suffered severe head trauma, facial cuts and other injuries and were airlifted to Shands Hospital in critical condition. Jessica's condition quickly improved, and she was released Tuesday.

Megan has not been so lucky.

She has not awakened. Doctors have tried to remove life-support equipment, but she has not been able to breathe on her own. And aside from some subtle, barely detectable movements, she's been largely unresponsive and remains in critical condition.

And her father remains at her side.

Yesterday, there was a break in the case. Investigators here announced that they had identified, but not charged, the driver of the vehicle that hit the two girls.

According to police, Joseph Bryant Edmonson Jr., 47, acknowledged being at the beach on the day of the accident but said he didn't recall hitting anyone. Police said they were still gathering evidence.

While relieved that Edmonson and his SUV were found, Hamlin doubted the driver's explanation.

"He doesn't remember it?" Hamlin asked, incredulous. "Once, I ran over this baby rabbit - four, five inches long. I swerved to avoid it, but I hit it, and I felt that in my Ford F-150. With the radio on.

"So how you can run over two human heads and not remember it is beyond me." He paused. "You know, you can raise your child, protect it, make sure it's a good person, and just like that somebody can take it all away."

Moments after he learned that police said they had identified the driver, Hamlin took time to thank residents of Florida and Philadelphia who have kept the girls in their prayers. He recalled how he had learned of the June 20 accident.

"I got a call that there had been an accident with Megan and Jessie," said Hamlin, a salesman for an environmental and recycling firm who is divorced from Megan's mother and has custody of his daughter. "I was just in shock. I couldn't believe it."

After a quick flight to Jacksonville that night and a rental-car trip to the hospital, whatever composure he thought he had evaporated the minute he saw Megan.

"I was just crying, crying, couldn't stop crying," said Hamlin, a barrel-chested, bespectacled man whose address now is Chalfont but whose deep baritone is still rooted in Northeast Philadelphia, where he grew up.

"I couldn't believe what I was looking at. There were tubes everywhere. You name it, she had a tube coming out of it."

The father recalled the last time he had spoken with his daughter - an aspiring pastry chef and a cheerleader going into her junior year at Central Bucks West, a "sweet kid" who was looking forward to her driver's test July 11, who favored Abercrombie & Fitch clothing and spent marathon shopping sessions at the Montgomery Mall.

"It was Father's Day," he said. "She made me breakfast, pancakes. The night before she made me a cake. I got up that morning, and she was just like, 'You lay on the sofa, it's your day.' "

Later that day, when Jessie and her parents were on their way to pick up Megan for their Florida vacation, she called her dad.

"She said, 'I love you,' " he recalled. "And I told her to call me when she got there. And, of course, she didn't call. But then I heard from her in the worst way possible."

During the last week and a half, the self-described lapsed Catholic has steeled himself with whispered prayers to a God he thought he'd forgotten, with the wishes of those who have heard their story, and with something as simple as a father's hope, no matter the odds.

"I know she's starting over again," he said, anticipating the day she wakes up and begins her rehabilitation. "I just keep hoping that maybe Megan will be one of those fortunate few who are able to recover fully from this.

"And we're going to do whatever we can, whatever it takes," he said. "That girl deserves it."