“I wanted to speak to my mom in case I didn’t make it out. It was already past midnight. She answered the phone tired and confused why I would possibly be calling. ‘Mom, there is a shooter here, we are on the floor, please stay on the phone with me.’”
‘What the hell was that? Get down!’ 60 seconds later, our lives would never be the same. At that moment, it hit me. ‘Oh my God, people are really dying here.’
‘I just got shot, I just got shot, I…got…shot.’ Trapped under a pile of squirming, scared bodies, I lay helplessly on the cold rooftop floor, blood inching toward my face. It wasn’t my blood.’
“I stared at a man next to me gasping for breath. A frantic woman gave him mouth-to-mouth through his blood-covered face, desperate to save him. He was alone. No one knew who he was. As the paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher and carried me down the stairs, I saw them cover his body.”
‘Dear neighbor, It’s me. The girl on the other side of your walls. The one who dialed 911 at 2:30 a.m. last night.’
“The one who heard you screeching as your alcoholic husband was screaming in a drunken fury. I’m the one who told the police that you have 5 children. As a survivor of domestic abuse, it pulls at my heart every time I hear yelling next door.”
‘I heard an unusual sound. Planes went over the house all the time, but this was different. A cascade of plaster and roofing crashed all around me. ‘It hit us!’
“The tail of the plane was in our kitchen. I noticed a small opening above me. I tried pushing the obstruction, but had no success moving it. I tried yelling in case anyone might be near enough to hear me. ‘That’s our house. I don’t know where my husband is. Please help my daughter!'”
‘Mom, we have to take them home.’ It was so hard to look at these girls and not cry. It was like looking into the eyes of my sister, eyes I had not seen in 8 years, eyes I would never see again.’
“The woman who had the girls was not at all family, but a friend from church. They had been removed from her care and were in a foster home. After we got off the phone, I panicked – what was I going to do?”
‘The receptionist uttered 10 words I will never forget, ‘Baby, it’s not good. You need to get here now.’ I knew I was sick, but nothing could’ve ever prepared me for what was happening.’
“Every symptom, dismissed as normal. At one point someone said, ‘You worried a lot with your daughter, don’t worry this time.’ To this day, those words haunt me.”
‘He claimed he was going to leave his mark on me for my next boyfriend. I had a scar wrapping from cheek to cheek, now known as the ‘girl that had her lip bitten off.”
“I wasn’t there to get back together with him. I refused, only to feel him latch on to me. I started screaming at the top of my lungs for help and out of fear for my life.”
‘The other day I read I was a victim. Because my son died, I am considered a victim. I threw the book away.’
“I never thought I would laugh again. I didn’t deserve it. I lost a child. I had no right to be happy.”
‘I recall sitting in the dark on the couch after the worst of it all. I knew I was being hurt. It was the day where from beneath him I screamed, ‘DAD! STOOOOOPPPPP!’’
“He got up immediately with apologies spewing. I was sworn to secrecy in the most manipulative ways.”
‘In truth, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be (just) me anymore. I have found such comfort and safety in being a mother.’
“I was married young. I was pregnant soon after. I followed my husband’s career and livelihood. And all I keep hearing is: ‘Well, what are you going to make of this, Wendy?'”
