I CONNECT WITH Heather Adams through her advocacy work, which she began after a fifteen-year-old boy walked into Marshall County High School and fatally shot two of his classmates, injuring fourteen others. Heather’s son, Seth, was in that school. Her voice beams with pride as she tells me how Seth emerged as a natural leader during the panic of the shooting. He was calm, and was able to help many of his classmates who were panicked.
As Heather tells me her story of the shooting, her panic, her rush to the school, the unreturned texts, she lands on the waiting. The waiting to hear, the waiting for names, the waiting for what comes next. This is a theme I’ve found prevalent in this work—the waiting. Parents sending texts and desperately needing to see that read receipt, or to feel the vibration of a returned text in their palm. But Heather’s story is not of her own waiting, it’s of someone else’s.
Heather spent the better part of that terrible day comforting a woman whom she would later discover was the shooter’s mother. The sins of the parent. The sins of the child. This woman had no idea her son was the shooter, she simply showed up at the school as afraid as the others who had gathered, and prayed that her son was safe. Even after the connection was discovered, Heather treated her with kindness.
There are so many parents devastated by mass shootings, there is enough pain and loss and sorrow to go around the world five times. But Heather’s story made me think of the parents not represented in that collective grief. Theirs are the stories left untold. Theirs are the deaths often not counted among the dead. Judgments are made: this parent is responsible, this one isn’t. This one was careless, this one too indulgent. As a mother, I have made a hundred bad decisions, how do I know where any of them will lead? Will I be judged for those mistakes? Who decides?
AMYE ARCHER, EDITOR
JANUARY 2019
The following students were shot and killed at
Marshall County High School:
Preston Ryan Cope, 15
Bailey Nicole Holt, 15
LIKE ANY OTHER DAY
By Cloi Henke
Cloi Henke was a freshman at Marshall County High School when the shooting took place.
My best friend, Hailey Case, and I were leaving the school cafeteria on January 23, when shots rang out. My smile disappeared, and without hesitation, I took off running. I didn’t know what was happening. But I knew I had to run.
I ran with my classmates. I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear the screams.
I got about fifteen steps away from the door and stopped. I panicked. I didn’t see Hailey. I headed back in. She meant and still means everything to me. Even though I was confused and didn’t know the details of the danger, I had to find her. I barely stepped back inside when I heard Hailey call my name. After we met, we held each other close, and started walking, surprisingly calm considering the shooting.
Outside, we ran into a friend of ours who was having a panic attack. He was facing the commons and saw everything. That was the first time I had to help someone through a panic attack, and it was upsetting.
When he regained his breath, we started walking again, talked about what just happened.
“Is this some kind of sick joke? Is this really happening?” I asked.
We walked to town. The road was full of us kids wandering after running or walking as far as we could from school. Drivers stopped their cars and asked us what happened, but instead of staying on the road, Hailey and my other friends, went to a golf cart store. I sat down. I hadn’t thought about calling my mom until a friend offered me her phone. I called twelve times before she finally answered. I attempted calm, but when my mom answered and I heard her voice, I broke down sobbing. I told her everything that happened, all of it releasing from me. Her own panic was obvious, she struggled to breathe as she repeated what I told her to my father.
When I got home, my phone was blowing up. Everyone at Marshall was calling and texting each other, asking if everyone they knew was okay. My parents had the local news on. The shooting was plastered on almost every channel. It was unreal. It still didn’t feel like I was there.
The day after, there was an odd quiet in the atmosphere. It looked dark outside. Time slowed. And then began the waiting.
WAITING TO FIGURE KNOW WHO PULLED THE GUN.
WAITING TO KNOW WHOSE LIVES WERE LOST.
WAITING TO KNOW WHO WAS INJURED.
WAITING AND PRAYING.
PRAYING AND WAITING.
HOPING I DIDN’T KNOW THE SHOOTER OR THEIR VICTIMS.
I wasn’t prepared for a shooting at my high school. The closest Marshall ever came to preparing us for a shooter was by lockdown drill, which consisted of us locking our classroom doors and turning off the lights. The training also allowed us to ask our teachers questions.
“What would we do if a kid was at the door needing in?” one student asked.
“We wouldn’t be able to open the door for them, it’s either them or a classroom full,” the teacher responded.
That line of questioning haunted me, but still I didn’t think that one day, we’d have to make those decisions.
In all honesty, I don’t think we are preparing kids properly for a shooting. But perhaps this is because there is no true way to prepare for trauma, for tragedy. I often question why someone would do something so horrific, and why youth must suffer these actions and consequences. It’s all so frightening. And something’s gotta change. Something’s gotta give. I never want to experience a shooting again. I don’t want anyone else to have to experience it, either.
FEELING SAFE
By Hailey Case
Hailey Case was a freshman at Marshall County High School when the shooting took place.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE
TO BE SHOT AT?
It’s terrifying. You see it on TV and hear about in the news, but you never realize how scary it actually is. You never think it can happen to you, until it does. And you’re never prepared for it. It’s panicking and freezing. It’s running, even before you know what’s going on, because everyone else is. It’s hearing screaming. It’s not knowing if you’re okay, if you’re hurt, or even shot. It’s watching people get shoved to the ground and trampled. It’s stepping over them and not stopping because you can’t stop running. It’s not being able to focus on anything except getting away as fast as you can.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE
TO BE SHOT AT IN YOUR SCHOOL?
It’s laughing with your friends before hearing gunshots and not realizing what they are until it’s almost too late. It’s watching your friends run for their lives. It’s stepping over people you’ve gone to school with your entire life, not knowing if they’re dead, alive, injured, or in need of help. It’s knowing you wouldn’t be able to stop even if they were. It’s running through the halls of your school with panic and fear at your heels. It’s a rescue. It’s calling everyone you know, trying to get someone to answer. It’s a body count.
I know what a school shooting looks like because I was in one. I was a freshman at Marshall County High School on January 23, 2018, when a fellow student came into my high school with a gun. Shortly before first block, he opened fire and ended up killing two students and wounding fourteen others.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE
TO BE A SCHOOL SHOOTING SURVIVOR?
It’s running and jumping into your dad’s arms when he comes to pick you up. It’s him squeezing you so hard that you feel like you can’t breathe. It’s riding in the back seat, holding your best friend’s hand because neither of you can stop shaking. It’s being terrified to drop her off because you don’t understand that neither of you are in danger anymore.
It’s getting your little brother and cousins from school because if it can happen at your school, then it can happen at theirs. It’s picking your mom up from work and having her climb into the back seat with you as you sob into one another. It’s nightmares and panic attacks. It’s therapy session after therapy session, just trying to feel normal again. It’s being too numb to cry for days and then sobbing in your mother’s arms, asking her why it had to be them and not you. It’s wondering what made you so special, that you get to live and they don’t? It’s your family telling you that you did everything right, but you dig your nails into your arm so that you don’t tell them what you’re really feeling: that you’d rather have gotten shot trying to help someone than to feel like a coward right now. That the guilt that you got out unharmed is bearing down on your chest until you can’t breathe.
It’s jumping at every loud noise. It’s locating the closest exit every time you go somewhere. It’s worrying you will never, ever again feel safe.
THE TIME LINE OF TRAUMA
By Heather Adams
Heather Adam’s son, Seth, was a fifteen-year-old freshman at Marshall County High School.
It was an otherwise uneventful morning, with normal rushing around the house, making sure the kids had their backpacks and lunchboxes, checking that their bed head wasn’t too bad. I drove my blue mom-van into the sun on the way to drop my fifteen-year-old son at the bus, and my ten-year-old son at Benton Elementary School. It was a bright and warm-enough January day to wear a hoodie instead of a winter coat. Then, it began.
8:11 A.M.
My mother called. She was hysterical. I could hardly understand what she was saying. Maybe I didn’t want to. “There have been shots fired at the high school,” she yelled. I screamed into the phone incoherently, fearing for my son, Seth. “Oh my God, Seth! Fuck, no. Oh my God. I gotta go.” I was almost sure that Seth had been targeted because of an issue we had earlier in the school year. I imagined a black semiautomatic handgun, but an AR-type soon replaced it.
I was scared, but not surprised there had been a school shooting here. I had been waiting for this day to come ever since the Valentine’s Day, 2008, Northern Illinois University shooting. In my hometown, a shooter armed with a shotgun and three pistols killed five and injured seventeen students. I had family and friends on the campus that day, and it took us two hours to get in touch with some of them because all the cell towers went down.
I texted Seth. No response. I messaged again. Nothing. I called. He answered and whispered, “I’m okay. We’re safe in a classroom, but I can’t talk.”
8:13 A.M.
Seth texted. “We’re ok. Everyone is safe,” he wrote.
“Omg I’m coming for you,” I replied, already en route to the school.
“No, they won’t let you on campus. Mom, trust me. We are safe in a room. Don’t put yourself in danger. Please. We are all okay. The shooter stopped. Listen to me. Don’t come here. We are okay. Mom, I am okay. Nobody is being hurt right now.”
8:14 A.M.
I left to pick up my mom and rush to the school. While driving, I called my husband at work. He just received a text that something was happening at the high school. I told him, “Seth is safe, but there’s been a shooting at the high school. I’m on my way there now. I’ll be in touch.” He simply told me, “You need to slow down and be safe. Call me when you get there.”
8:25 A.M.
I arrived to pick up my mom. She looked devastated. We hugged and jumped in my van. We arrived at the school, but couldn’t get very close. I parked in a no-parking zone by the high school, confident the police were too busy to ticket me. I remember it smelled like wet earth because it had rained the day or night before. Helicopters roared overhead, some for Life Flight, others for news. It felt like a war zone.
8:28 A.M.
Seth texted again, “The police are here. The shooting is over.” I called the elementary school to find out if the students there knew about the shooting. The office said the children were still blissfully unaware. I asked that if word got out, would they please find my son, Miles, and let him know his brother is okay.
8:30 A.M. AND BEYOND
Adrenaline flooded my system. I was thirsty and my lips were dry. I tried to stay calm. I called one of my best friends, Jan, in Nebraska, a fierce gun violence prevention advocate. I needed to tell her before she saw it on the news. She was at once sorry, supportive, and angry. I didn’t cry, knowing I had to keep my cool. It felt good to know that Jan was there for me.
At the high school, more people arrived. I was relieved to see another mom I know, whose son was safe with Seth. With nothing left to do but wait, I turned to see if could help other parents, some of whom looked distraught. I approached them to ask if they have heard from their child. I started texting Seth names of students whose parents still hadn’t heard from them because he was in a room with a lot of other kids.
I approached another mom, with sandy-blonde hair, a dark sweater, and a sparkly, yellow-gold scarf. Her name was Mary. She looked scared. She said she had heard from her son early on, and that he was out by the stadium, but she hadn’t heard from him since. I explained to her that the shooting happened in the commons, so if he was out by the stadium, then he’s probably safe. Maybe he dropped his phone while running. Many of the kids had.
I asked Mary her son’s name and I messaged Seth, “Gabe Parker, safe?” Seth knew Gabe because they were in marching band together.
He messaged back, “Don’t know where Parker is.”
Mary’s knees buckled. I held my arm around her as she vomited, holding back her hair and scarf. I tried to reassure her. I reminded her to breathe.
I started asking some of the officials if they had any information about Gabe Parker, but they didn’t know anything. Mary became less steady on her feet. I kept talking to her, reassuring her that I would help her reach her son, speculating that maybe he had run and lost his phone. Soon, she was shaking and crying. Again, I reminded her to breathe.
Suddenly, Mary’s phone rang. The call was short. She was screaming into the phone, “Why are the police at my house? Why would they be at my house?”
I could no longer console her. I asked the police officer posted nearby for an ambulance because she needed help I couldn’t give her. He said he would try, but they were busy tending to the fourteen wounded teenagers.
We stayed with her while she cried. She said she needed her husband, and that she was waiting for him to call her back. She was leaning on me when her phone rang again. It was her husband returning her call. She was shaking so much that we had to help her answer her phone. She began to sob hysterically. Whatever was said in that phone call, one thing was clear: her son was the shooter.
I tried to support Mary the best I could. I tried to get her medical help. I held her up, and held her hand while she wept, knowing that in some way, she was grieving her son, too. Someone nearby tried to comfort her by telling her it would be okay. “No, it won’t,” Mary replied.
I tried to be with Mary in that moment without giving her false hope. “You’re right,” I said, “this is not okay, it won’t ever be okay.” I held her until Seth messaged saying that he was on a bus and on his way to North Marshall Middle School for pickup. I turned over Mary’s care to a very nice man from the rescue squad. After I stood up, I stopped, took her hands in mine, looked her in the eye, and told her that I’d be thinking about her. And, I have been. I often think about reaching out to her, but I don’t know how. Even though I’m mad as hell that she had an unsecured gun in her home, she suffered a trauma that day, too. All I can do now is hope I helped soften the blow of her pain. She has suffered death threats so bad she was unable to leave her home, and she actually moved away in the months following the shooting.
When I picked up Seth and his girlfriend, Lela, I hugged them both. I dropped my mother off at her car, and then went to get my youngest, Miles, from his elementary school. The school was eerily quiet, somber. I went into the office and had them page Miles up from his classroom. The sign-out sheet was long. A lot of parents had already come to pick up their kids. When Miles rounded the corner, I could tell that he knew something had happened. His eyes were wide, and his face was pale. I later learned that Miles found out about the shooting hours before I picked him up, but the teachers were unaware that the students knew. So he spent hours worrying about and not knowing his brother’s condition.
I took Lela home so she could spend some time with her parents, but she came back over around 6:00 p.m. It was just me and the boys when their dad got home from work. He hugged the children. Then we shared our stories.
Seth told us that he and his friends had been in the cafeteria. They had finished breakfast, but were hanging out waiting for the bell. He was getting ready for an Algebra II exam he would have that morning when he heard the first shot. He had thought it was someone banging a lunch tray on the table. Then he heard the second shot, and knew it was gunfire. He yelled at his friends that those were gunshots, and said, “Let’s go!” He threw his backpack two tables over and ran in the opposite direction. He shepherded his friends out the back door of the cafeteria. They were only twenty yards from the gunman. They saw students fall. They ran to exit the back of the cafeteria and dove into a classroom across the hall.
There was a teacher escorting them into the classroom and he had them hide in a corner behind some filing cabinets. The teacher turned off the lights, locked the door, and periodically looked out the long thin glass window in the door. Lela went into shock, rocking back and forth, unable to string words together. She remained that way until she spoke with a crisis counselor at North Marshall Middle School.
They had stayed in the classroom until the SWAT team arrived with their rifles. They had to exit the room with their hands locked behind their hands. The police escorted them to the Tech Center like that.
It’s now nine months later. Things that should scare me, don’t anymore. Like tornadoes. My heart races from helicopter sounds and gunfire. After every new shooting in the news, the memories flood back in. I feel like I must be crazy sending my kids to school every morning, and I have to remind myself that this is what we do in a civilized society. We go to movies. We go to concerts. We go to church. And we definitely go to school.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
By R. Sterling Haring, D.O., MPH
Sterling Haring was a first-year resident physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, when victims from the Marshall County High School shooting were brought in.
THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
NEVER SLEEPS.
At a major academic medical center like Vanderbilt, injuries and illness bring patients from hundreds of miles away seeking the best medical care available. Most come through the emergency department, contributing to a constant churn and flow unique to this part of the hospital.
In January 2018, I was toward the end of a one-month stint in the ED, part of the first year of my medical residency at Vanderbilt. As an “off-service” resident, my role was to examine patients, conduct appropriate testing, and discuss my diagnosis and treatment plan with the attending physician on duty. In the event of a trauma case, I was to stand in a designated spot in the trauma bay to observe and assist as needed.
As I arrived for my shift on the morning of January 23, something seemed different. I still can’t pinpoint exactly what it was that tipped me off, but as soon as I walked in the door I could tell that something was wrong. I asked a nearby nurse what was happening, and she told me the news. There had been a shooting at a high school nearby, with an unknown number of injuries. Some had already arrived via helicopter and had been rushed to the OR for emergency surgery. Others were en route. I dropped my bag and hurried to the trauma bays.
For weeks, my wife and I had discussed schooling options for our five-year-old son. When he was three, we had spent a year living in Switzerland while I worked as a research fellow. Under the Swiss system, he attended kindergarten at a nearby elementary school and had done well, despite having to learn Italian to interact with his teachers and friends. Now that we had returned to the U.S., we worried about how he might adjust to a new type of school. As we discussed the pros and cons of the local public school options, we had a number of competing priorities. How many children would there be in his class? Were there particular subject emphases or teaching styles? Would the student body be sufficiently diverse? What about safety? Is there a dress code? How far is the commute? We decided that on my next day off, we’d go see local schools and gather as much information as possible.
As we visited each school, one priority became increasingly obvious: safety. At some schools, we could walk in through the front door with little trouble. At others, doors were locked and we had to identify ourselves via speakerphone for entry. Still others had a security window where a school employee approved each visitor. It became clear the world had changed since I was in kindergarten, and the risk of a gun-wielding visitor or student was very real. The thought was terrifying.
We ended the day with a short list and only a few days to make a decision about where he would attend. As I left for the Emergency Department (ED) the next morning, I reviewed the options in my head, determined to have a school preference by the end of my shift.
The trauma bay was already abuzz when I arrived, and I was relieved to see that a friend and colleague was already there. We talked as we put on the blue plastic gowns, gloves, and surgical caps required in the trauma bay. I learned that some of the students had already come through had potentially fatal injuries, and rumors were circulating about a possible fatality. No word on how many more were coming, or how many had been declared dead on the scene. Someone said they thought the school was in Kentucky, but they weren’t sure.
We stood in the trauma bay, gowned in blue from head to toe, with a silent energy that toed the line between excitement and fear of what we might see. Not because the team wouldn’t be able to handle the injury, but a very human fear that didn’t want to see a child with devastating injuries. Somewhere in the reverent silence, I thought about the parents of these children, and the anxiety they must be feeling as they wait somewhere, frantically searching, praying, hoping against hope to find their child around the next corner.
After my third year of medical school, while my colleagues prepared to apply for residency, I had decided to spend a year studying public health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. There, I found myself drawn to the study of injuries and the policies that can prevent them. Injuries, like an infectious epidemic, can often be tracked, predicted, and stopped. Variations in laws between states and across time often created natural experiments that allowed experienced epidemiologists and policy analysts to evaluate the effects of specific policy interventions on rates of injury and death. Such an approach, pioneered by storied scientists such as Susan Baker, Bill Haddon, and others, had led to the implementation of seat belts, air bags, and countless major and minor interventions and regulations that have saved millions of lives over decades of work.
Today, these efforts are led by a coordinated effort between the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and university- and organization-based researchers around the globe, who continue to search for effective and implementable solutions to issues ranging from traumatic brain injury to the opioid epidemic.
Due in part to a piece of legislation known as the Dickey Amendment, however, the CDC is specifically prohibited from using congressionally appropriated funds for any type of research that could be perceived as promoting so-called “gun control.” In practice, this often prevented the CDC and, sometimes, partner organizations from tracking gun-related deaths and measuring the impact of a variety of state laws on reducing those deaths. In short, the agency in charge of reducing death and injury across the nation was explicitly forbidden from investigating one of the key contributors to death in the United States.
I worked closely with the Injury Center for the remainder of my degree program at Johns Hopkins, and after its completion, spent time studying injury policy at CDC and later as a research fellow at Harvard. Our work, which has found its way to the pages of the New York Times and TIME Magazine as well as network television, focuses on how and why injuries occur, and exactly what types of policies might prevent them.
I heard a commotion down the hall, and people standing in the hallway outside the trauma bay started to step back to make room for an approaching gurney. Paramedics rolled in a young man with a gruesome gunshot wound, and, for just a moment, I stood in shock. Not at the wound itself—in my few weeks in the ED I’d seen many so-called “GSWs” (gunshot wound)—but at the victim. He looked and dressed like I looked and dressed in high school. In that moment, I recognized the biting reality that this young man, in all his humanity, was me. He was my brother, my neighbor, my friends, and my family. And he was my son. Lying on a gurney, bleeding from a bullet wound from a war he wasn’t supposed to be fighting.
The trauma team seemed to jump into action before the gurney had even fully entered the room. I watched as they ran through the well-rehearsed trauma protocol with a speed and efficiency that can only come from years of devastating experience. The decision was made to remove the plastic collar around the young man’s neck, but after receiving further information from the paramedics, it was decided that it was best left in place until further imaging could be reviewed. I grabbed a plastic cervical collar from the shelf behind me and my colleague gingerly slid it into place, bracing the fragile nerves of the spinal cord in case a stray bullet fragment had compromised the strength of the bones that surround it.
As the second phase of examination began, I wondered how this had happened. Where had this young man been when he was shot? It was early—maybe homeroom, or an early math class? Had he been sitting at a desk? Hiding in a corner? Running? What had raced through his mind when the shooting began, or did it happen too soon to register?
The trauma team’s assessment phase began to wrap up, and my thoughts turned to the next steps of this young man’s care. He would be rolled down the hall for a so-called “CT traumagram,” which would take a detailed X-ray-like image of every inch from head to mid-thigh. A radiologist would pore over the images, looking for evidence of potentially life-threatening abnormalities such as internal bleeding, ruptured internal organs, or fragments of metal. The big decisions—such as whether he would need emergent surgery—would follow.
I reviewed these steps in my mind and felt a flicker of gratitude that, for the moment, it appeared this young man may have escaped a fatal injury. I took a deep breath. Looking back at the young man, I thought briefly of the impact this tragedy would doubtless have on school safety. The images of children being rushed from a building, bullet wounds packed with gauze, ambulance helicopters landing on a high school lawn before whisking young people off to undergo emergency surgery in the next state over—these images would devastate America, right? Surely lawmakers—many of them mothers and fathers themselves—would be tripping over one another to introduce legislation aimed at preventing another school shooting? Then it hit me. Without warning, like a punch in the gut, I could almost feel the wind being knocked out of my lungs as the all-too-familiar phrase raced across my mind: thoughts and prayers.
Another school, another victim.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS.
Another teenager with a bullet hole.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS.
Another ED, another OR, filled with young people who were bleeding internally and externally. Families panicking. Lives ruined. Lives lost.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS.
Press conferences, statements prepared by PR teams.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS.
No time for questions, break for coffee after another successful presser.
The thought was suddenly nauseating. I looked for a biohazard bin and wondered if I would make it in time. Realizing that I was gowned and masked and far from the main bin, I rested a hand on a supply cart to my left and took deep breaths while the young man was wheeled out of the room toward the CT scanner. As I tore off my gown and walked out of the trauma bay, I looked at the bay to my left and realized they were getting another shooting victim, but I needed to sit down. I went to a small workroom and took a minute to sit and breathe. The nausea passed, but the disgust stayed. I needed to process the events of the day, but told myself that now was not the time or the place. There were patients that needed to be seen, and the quicker I got to work, the faster I’d be able to put all of this into my pocket to unpack later.
My shift wrapped up that evening, and I walked from the ED to my car on the roof of a nearby parking garage. The cold night air had coated the windshield with a thin layer of frost, and for a brief moment, I was alone and invisible. I turned on the car and sobbed. Big, sad, desperate, devastated sobs. I cried for the children who had been shot; particularly for those who died, but also for those who had survived, I cried for their parents. And I cried for a society that would do nothing about it. I cried that reelection and campaign contributions would outweigh a young man on a cold hospital table with a hole in his flesh, unsure if he would live or die.
I gathered my composure and sent a quick note to the few hundred injury policy colleagues with whom I interacted on Twitter. Surely, if anyone could understand my frustration, it would be these few.
I drove home, walked into our small home, our two young children fast asleep, and sat down next to my wife. As my wife wrapped her arms around my shoulders, I cried again. Harder, sadder, deeper this time. I cried, this time, however selfishly, for me. I cried as a doctor who had seen what no doctor should have to see, especially while still in training. I cried as a human, devastated to be experiencing the result of our collective apathy. But more than anything, I cried as a father. I cried for my young son, eager to start kindergarten in a school not unlike the one in Marshall County, Kentucky, that lie reeling that night from violent death, the blood of its students still staining the pages of textbooks and homework. I cried for him, and for me, and for us.
My wife, to her everlasting credit, wept with me.