“I knew I needed to be wherever he was. I raced upstairs, put on clothes. After several unanswered phone calls, Jamie’s sergeant picked up. ‘He’s been shot in the back.’ He was paralyzed from the sternum down. The news didn’t hit until I had to relay it to my parents. I can’t make his pain go away. I can’t make his legs move again. But what I can do is love him.”
‘I got a message from a stranger offering condolences for my fiancé. My heart raced. I had NO IDEA what was going on.’: Deputy paralyzed in shooting, girlfriend embraces his ‘new normal’ with open arms
‘Am I ever going to walk again? Will I survive this?’ I couldn’t see it coming or avoid it. I never saw the man who did it. I just felt the shattering vibration in my leg and collapsed.’
“There was no fight, no scuffle. Just bone-crushing shock. For years, I imagined him as every man I saw – walking down the street, opening my office door, pushing through a crowd. Every victim I heard about on the news was me – helpless and broken – life as they knew it taken from them in one moment.”
