Experience: I was shot, and the bullet is still inside me

“Ethan, put the gun down, put the gun down!” I heard people scream upstairs. He said: “It isn’t even loaded.”

I was down in the basement, protecting four others. Then, suddenly, I felt like I had been struck by lightning and felt a searing hot pain in my leg.

One spring morning three years ago, in Wisconsin, a friend had persuaded me to drive them to a house where a fight had apparently broken out among friends. Things had initially calmed down by the time we got there, but then got heated again and someone pulled out a gun. People started panicking. I stayed in the basement, thinking it would be safe. I was wrong.

Although the shooter upstairs had pointed the gun at the floor, the wooden floorboards were little protection against the impact of the bullet. I felt pain in my leg and screamed: “I just got shot!” I was among strangers – my friend who had taken me there had left earlier, saying they’d be back.

I’ll never forget the screams of the people who ran away, fighting to get out of the house and leaving me behind. “Call 911,” I tried to shout, while telling myself to stay awake, thinking of those movie scenes of people bleeding out from a bullet wound.

Then I remembered I had my phone with me and, with shaking hands, tried calling an ambulance. I dialled the wrong number a few times, but eventually got it right. All I can remember is repeating to the operator: “I got shot, I got shot, please help me.”

A girl came in while I was on the phone – she had run away when the bullet struck, but returned. I noticed my hair was sopping wet with blood, and then she saw the bullet hole in my upper back. We realised that I hadn’t been shot in the leg but in my chest.

I tried to find the exit wound, but couldn’t. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, fighting to stay awake. At this point, some police officers burst into the room. Two escorted me to safety while others searched for the shooter, who was long gone.

My vision was hazy, my life flashing before my eyes, and then I woke up to a team doing CPR on me. “Stay with us,” they said. All I could think about was how tired I was and how much I wanted to tell my family I loved them. I had texted my dad just 15 minutes before the shooting to tell him I was about to head home. I begged the emergency workers not to let me die. Then I blacked out for a second time and woke up to a surgeon clapping in my face, trying to wake me.

I had a CT scan and an MRI. After surgery, I was told that the bullet had travelled in through my shoulder bone and gone into my chest, collapsing my right lung. My ribs were broken, my liver was lacerated and my kidney was ruptured. The bullet had lodged itself into a muscle 2cm from my spinal cord. I had initially thought I’d been shot in the leg because a nerve in my spine had been severed, sending shooting pains to the thigh.

The most horrendous moment was when they told me they had to leave the bullet lodged inside me because it was too close to my spinal cord and removing it would risk paralysis. I had more than 40 stitches and 29 staples through my abdomen. I had lost two pints of blood and was receiving blood and plasma. After six days, I was sent home to recover and be with my family, who were devastated.

Almost three years have gone by now and I still get nightmares. I have joined a gun-violence survivors’ network. I also still get painful shooting pains from the nerve damage, and sometimes my right leg feels numb.

I have never held a gun in my life and, while gun crime is far too common in the US, I never thought this would happen to me. My shooter went on the run for three days before turning himself in. He spent three months in jail, with five years on probation. There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about getting shot.

I hope the bullet can be removed safely one day, but for now it will be a reminder to make better choices. I hope telling my story can inspire young people to trust their instinct when situations feel dangerous or wrong. I am so grateful to be alive.

As told to Elizabeth McCafferty

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