Part 1: New Baby
I had just had my second child, another little boy. He was sweet, and quiet, and brought love back into our home, where stress and contention had become the norm between my husband and I. My pregnancies were hard, and unforgiving. I was still trying to recover from a nasty stitch job from my C-section, and a ten pound preemie. I slept as much as possible, and tried not to disrupt my stitches in an effort to heal quickly. A lot of that first month was a blur to me…but I do remember certain unsettling events leading up to our cancer diagnosis that were ominous, to say the least.
One stands out more than any other, The Trolley Square Shooting. A teenage boy walked into an upscale mall and shot 11 random people, resulting in 5 deaths before he was shot and killed by an undercover police officer dining in a nearby restaurant. The event remains vivid in my memory because I was there, in the midst, and middle of it all, the very store that he killed 5 people. I remember him walking into the store, seeing his long black trench coat, holding guns in each hand. I was scared to death, frozen from the surreal nature of what I was forced to watch. I eventually began running toward the back door to a dark parking lot where my husband and two babies were waiting for me to pick up toddler bed parts at Pottery Barn Kids. I always seemed to be in the wrong places at the wrong time, yet somehow managed to escape. It was a combination of spiritual protection and inner drive to survive that minimized my risk, and potential crisis.
We started our outing with a plan for my husband and the kids to window shop the adjacent stores while I was running my errand. As we approached the mall I had a nagging feeling in my gut that we should just go home and forget about the errands. I was tired, and in pain. Despite the promptings, I decided it was best that my family wait in the car while I quickly ran in, cutting our family shop time out. My husband was annoyed, and tried to convince me that we should all go on in. I couldn't shake my uneasy feeling about him going in, so I leaped out of the car and ran toward my destined store before any more discussion could take place about it.
“Hi, I’m just here to pick up the bed parts that were ordered for a toddler bed. I got a message saying they arrived,” I told a woman at the register.
“Yes, it looks like they are here in the back, let me go get them for you”, she said.
I waited at the counter, thumbing through their new catalog. The store was full with lots of little kids discovering the kitchen play sets, and books. Suddenly, without warning, there was a large crashing noise.....BOOM! Everyone in the store paused briefly. I exchanged glances with a lady standing at the register to the side of me.
“That was loud!” another customer said as she walked past us following her child to the book section at the front of the store.
The echo of the noise made it seem louder than normal, almost if a large window display was being hung outside the store, and had been carelessly dropped. Everyone went back to shopping, dismissing the crash. Less than a minute later the cannon like noise came again, followed by another, and another in a constant stream. This time, everyone paused and all eyes began scanning the room in a panic. Although it was one swift moment, it will be forever ingrained in my mind in slow motion. Everyone shifted their attention to the back storage room. Then there was running. A woman pushing her green stroller with one hand, was dragging her young daughter in the other, and crying as she moved as fast as she could to get away from the commotion. Right behind her was the source of the noise. A tall, thin man in a black trench coat began shooting a large barrel shot-gun directly at the running crowd, children, as well as adults. I stood paralyzed at the register watching the scene unfold, the voice in my head repeatedly telling me to “RUN!” I saw people running in the opposite direction of the shooter as he fired one shot after another. I had to get out. I finally snapped back into reality, engaged, and dropped all the items in my hand as I instinctively ran to the back door leading out of the shopping center. I was afraid of being shot in the back, but I took the chance anyway. I got to the door and tried to push it open but it was jammed. I started to cry. I remember a calm feeling had come over me for a brief second, and a soft voice say, “pull”. Screams and shots continued to pound less than 100 yards away. I pulled the door open and was free.
I ran to find my husband, but the parking lot was dark and I couldn’t see our car. Fear and chaos lingered in the air. He had been circling the parking lot keeping the kids entertained and pulled over when he saw me. I ran to the car and opened the door. I got in and shouted, “GO! Get us out of here.”
I was in obvious shock and unable to immediately recount the details of what happened. Fearing for the remaining customers, I called the store and was told they were all hiding behind a locked door in the office. Several people had been shot and the shooter was still in the mall. It was confirmation that what I had just experienced was real. I instantly remembered the promptings I had earlier. Had I not listened, my little family would have been in the direct path of the gunfire, and would surely have been harmed. The news coverage of this event went on for weeks, and the trauma remained in my nerves for a long time after. As horrific as it was, I could never have imagined that something even more traumatic in my life was right around the corner.
