It was Sunday afternoon and I had just gotten home from working at the Church. It was summer and the teaching position I worked the previous school year didn’t pay for the 2 months of summer break. I spent my nights working til almost 4 in the morning at Millers Ale House as a to go specialist. On the weekends I worked both at Millers Ale and at St.Mary of the Lakes in Eustis. Exhausted, I took a shower and got myself ready to go with my boyfriend Tommy to get burgers and hot dogs to grill at our friend’s house. While getting the burgers, I picked up a small to go sushi box to eat on the way to our friend’s house. We realized we had forgotten the cooler so we started to head back to the house to get it.

We were having the best day! Laughing and joking, just enjoying each others company. I was eating my sushi and Tommy was trying to steal a piece when our world flipped upside down. A car coming towards us from the opposite direction shot a gunshot through our vehicle. The bullet entered under my left eye, traveled through my sinus cavity and exited out of the other side of my head. I felt an insatiable fire in my head accompanied by a blindness that lasted somewhere between 2-5 minutes. “What happened”, I kept repeating but there was no answer. When my vision returned I saw a flood of red blood pouring from my face. I looked down at the bloody sushi and realized that whatever had just happened to me, I was dying and I didn’t have much time.

Tommy called 911 as soon as it happened. When we pulled into the driveway the emts pulled in almost immediately behind us. Tommy ripped his shirt off to put pressure on the bleeding wounds. I leaned my head backwards and started to close my eyes. “Hang on!”, Tommy cried. “Please hang on! Don’t go to sleep!”he cried. The emts pulled me out of the car and into the ambulance before I could even realize what was happening. What I did know was that I needed to do everything I could to live.

I remember everything, that’s what makes it hard to heal sometimes. I remember every swerve and bump of the ambulance. I remember the paramedics poking both of my arms with needles trying to quickly find a vein to put in an iv. I remember my face feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds and it burned like an unquenchable fire. When the ambulance arrived at ORMC they whisked me through the hallways and brought me back to a trauma bay room where 15-20 nurses and doctors in full PPE gear were standing there waiting for me. As I landed on the trauma bay table, a swarm of medical staff surrounded me. They cut off all of my clothes and I realized very quickly that I was alone and this part of the journey I had to fight on my own. I was surrounded by so many people and yet I felt so alone. I scanned the room for a doctor. When I locked eyes with what looked like a surgeon I yelled out as loud as I could, “don’t let me die”. The surgeon said nothing so I yelled louder, “don’t let me die! If you can save me do it.” He nodded and right as he did I was lifted onto a gurney and headed to a ct scan as a nurse pumped morphine into my arm.

When I woke up I remember feeling so cold. The nurse saw my eyes open and she looked at me astonished and ran to tell the others I had survived. Nurses and doctors from all over the hospital came to look and see with their own eyes that I was alive. The chaplain entered the trauma bay and asked if I knew “the Lovettes”. “Yes!, they are my family”, I cried. The Lovettes owned the CrossFit gym I went to. They ran toward me. Alexis started cleaning the blood off of me and Lee was doing everything he could to make me laugh. When they left I looked up and immediately started sobbing. Head down and walking fast Tommy was coming toward me down the hallway. He held me and I remember leaning into him sobbing feeling grateful he was there and taking in how this felt.

The entire night I threw up sleeves of blood. At one point I threw up so hard my stitches started to bleed. I was bandaged on both sides of my head because the bullet had completely entered and exited my skull. Because my head was bent eating the sushi, the bullet entered under my left eye and traveled through my sinus cavity. I’m grateful to everyone who worked hard to save me that day. Each day is a work in progress but I’m ultimately grateful to be alive.