The Day It All Changed
It was a Saturday morning. I woke up in my brother’s apartment and rolled my sore body off of his couch (AKA my bed). I opened my shattered iPhone 5 to send a good morning text to Kass. It was already 1:30 on the East Coast so I felt like a real jerk for sleeping in. Goodness, I was sleeping well though. I got up and started on a cup of coffee and filled Jake’s (pet cat) bowl with wet food. Hannah (Zach’s wife and my sister-in-law) must have heard Jake. Either that or her ridiculous coffee senses were tingling because she zombied her way into her kitchen to start on her coffee. We heard the roar of Zach finding consciousness from the bedroom and he worked his way into the kitchen to greet us. We started brainstorming what we were going to do on our day off. My brother and our friends had just gotten back from Afghanistan so whatever we did needed to include them.
Why not go to the shooting range? This “range” was an abandoned hillside-turned-shooting-range about an hour from the apartment. Zach and I would load up our ammo and range equipment into our friend’s van so we could ride our motorcycles there. We never needed an excuse to ride our bikes. I changed into my dirty biker jeans and strapped my concealed carry pistol to the inside of my waste band and belt. My 5 shot snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver was always on my hip. I unloaded my Glock 19 (primarily my target practice handgun) and realized that I was short on 9mm ammo. I locked it back into my gun case and we all decided to run to the local Bass Pro shop so I could restock on 9mm rounds for the range day. I bought some dirt-cheap bullets and made my way back to my truck with Zach and Hannah. We bumped into my Platoon Leader, then 1LT Ben Baker at the exit of the store. This man was the best leader that I had the pleasure of working under and I have the utmost respect for him. I worked directly with him as his radio man and I excitedly introduced him to my brother, not knowing how important his friendship would be to me in the very near future.
We got back to my brother’s apartment and shortly after our friends showed up together. I was extremely excited to see them because I hadn’t seen them in 4 months. They were off doing hood-rat shit in Afghanistan while I suffered through big-Army training events and monotonous classes getting me ready to leave the Army. They walked into Zach’s apartment and we greeted them with hugs. We all sat around the coffee table and got our handguns ready for the range by disassembling them to their most basic parts. We cleaned them and lubricated all of the moving pieces. I loaded up my Glock magazines and put a few boxes of 9mm ammo in my gun case. My friend was having a bit of trouble putting his Colt 1911 back together and I had done it a bunch of times so I helped him with a stubborn piece. My other friend was there and he also had a 1911. His wasn’t a stock 1911 though. It was a custom handgun that he had just bough off of a friend of his. It had a cool little rail, new sites, a laser attachment, and a much lighter trigger.
He asked if I wanted to check it out. Of course I did! I dropped the magazine and pulled the slide back to remove the .45 caliber hollow point from the chamber. I aimed the now clear weapon and turned on the laser. The gun was awesome! It fit well in my hand and it felt like a hand-cannon compared to my dinky revolver. I put the loose hollow point round back into the magazine, put the mag back into the handgun and gave it back to my friend. Little did I know, the bullet I had just touched would be the same bullet that would tear through my neck and I just handed back the pistol that would fire it to the man who would decide my fate.
After we were caught up and organized, I got up and walked to the slider door where I had laid my gun case down. I made my way toward the front door to leave, except... I never made it past the couch.
Obviously I don’t know what happened from this point on. It turns out that my friend with the custom 1911 was fooling around with his pistol and pretended to quick-fire on me as I walked by the couch. He hadn’t checked to see if it wasn’t loaded and because of his ignorance, he had sent a chunk of lead through my throat.
A lot of this day has come back to me very slowly. At first my memory was pretty jacked up. Reliving it doesn’t give me PTSD or anything like that. It just makes me want to go back and maybe sleep in a little more instead of going to the range (or at least not wear one of my favorite sweaters to get covered in blood). In all seriousness though, this day has shown me how easily a life can change forever and I hope that by reading my story you can see how precious and delicate your lives actually are. Live each day with purpose!
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