Your first thought is to stay alive. To run. This is incredible in itself. Middle class people are not used to running for their lives. Maybe the military, the soldier, the veteran, but now you are running from the bullets. It is the shots you hear. This is the sound that gets you running like you have never run before. And everyone else is running too. It is an avalanche or a tornado of humans doing what they are not used to and that is dealing with a fight of flight response that is overwhelming. Time slows down during this or ceases to exist. You are somewhere between moments that might be your last.
And then when the shooter is secure the situation is still active. This means no one knows if there are others. You cannot relax. You are still in danger. And the ambulances and police and Swat teams and media come in a flood. You talk like someone else and recant your experience. You marvel how calm you sound as you learn of those who were not so lucky. And once the wave passes and you finally get home you are different. You will never ever be the same. You will never view a public place the same way. You will never trust the world again. In the time it takes a bullet to go a mile you have been changed. You are now in a club no one wants to belong to, the victims of a mass shooting.
And then you are trying to make yourself small. You will hide behind grass if you have too. Anything to stop those bullets that surely have your name. You just cant get away fast enough and everyone else is trying to do the same. You have no time to consider you are literally running for your life. That will come later when you go to bed and you hear the shots over and over. Right now you are in the land of hyper-awareness fueled by adrenal cells working overtime. You are a revved up machine that is bent on trying to get out of the trajectory of a piece of flying metal that might have your name on it.
And then when the shooter is secure the situation is still active. This means no one knows if there are others. You cannot relax. You are still in danger. And the ambulances and police and Swat teams and media come in a flood. You talk like someone else and recant your experience. You marvel how calm you sound as you learn of those who were not so lucky. And once the wave passes and you finally get home you are different. You will never ever be the same. You will never view a public place the same way. You will never trust the world again. In the time it takes a bullet to go a mile you have been changed. You are now in a club no one wants to belong to, the victims of a mass shooting.
*William Hazelgrove and his family were in the Ft Lauderdale Mass Shooting. He is writing a book The Shots In Terminal 2
