The .380-caliber bullet ripped through her left eye and down through the roof of her mouth on its way to her lung, where it lodged, hard up against her rib cage.
Spinning, she fell to the floor.
There was so much blood. So much blackness.
She slumped and a minute went by. Then, an honest-to-goodness miracle happened: The woman came to her senses and heard God’s own voice, lifting and pulling her through.
“Get up,” the voice said. “Get up, Nancy. Get up!”
Even though she was in shock and grievously wounded, she suddenly knew where she was: lying on the concrete floor of a garage. The garage of a house—her own home—on Bluebonnet Way, in a posh Dallas suburb where only the paranoid locked their front doors and all of her neighbors treated each other’s kids as their own.
The woman knew who she was: Nancy Howard, aged fifty-three.
A loving wife. A churchgoer. Above all, a doting mother.
She had to live, for the sake of her kids.
Nancy knew it was August: The concrete felt heavy and warm. And although the floor was slippery with her blood, she started crawling.
“How could this happen?” she said to herself. “Sweet Jesus, how is this happening? And why is it happening to me?”
She needed her phone now to call 911. But her phone was in the purse taken by the man who had shot her.
Left for dead, she was still breathing, although with each breath it got harder and harder. And so she crawled, and as she crawled she thought, My car is here, in the garage.
The car has OnStar.
The OnStar operator can call 911.
Somehow, she managed to open the door. But without her key, which was in her stolen purse, OnStar would not turn on.
“Oh, Jesus, help me,” she said. “Jesus, just give me the strength to stand up!”