The day I was shot in Durham

The detective asked me if I recognized any of the faces. A manila folder was open before me on my kitchen table. "When I open the folder, there will be six pictures," the detective explained. "I'm not allowed to tell you anything about them. Just tell me whether you see him." When he opened the folder, two rows of Polaroid snapshots stared at me, each picture with its own blank expression. I thought back to the night it happened, two weeks earlier, and about how in a matter of seconds, a stranger changed my life.

I never found out his name. This is what I did know, and what I told the police: He had a broad nose and a face with a dark complexion. A slim mustache appeared to be just growing in above his lip. He could not have been older than 14 or 15. He approached John and me riding a BMX-style bicycle as we stood in a dimly-lit parking lot behind a doctor's office in Durham. He wore jeans, a dark, hooded sweatshirt and a baseball hat that may have been camouflage.

And he had a gun.

"Give it to me. Give it all to me. You've got less than five seconds."

As I replayed what happened that night, I was surprised at how soft his voice was, how it remained calm, given the tense situation. He spoke exactly 15 words, none of which offered any clue as to why he might be doing this. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere, but I would later recall noticing him circling the edge of the parking lot minutes before he approached us. He now sat on his bike only a few feet in front of us.

John and I had been deep in conversation, paying no attention to our surroundings. We had just finished a doctor's deposition, and there we stood, two lawyers dressed in suits. John, 20 years my senior, held a leather briefcase in his right hand. I was holding a thick file of medical records on my left hip.

The shots started as soon as the last words left the shooter's mouth. John was hit first. The bullet pierced his abdomen and he collapsed like a deflated balloon. The second bullet followed a split second after the first. It tore through my left forearm, entering as a slim, smooth cylinder no more than a quarter inch in diameter, but exiting as a 2-inch slug of destructive fury, shaped like the chopping blade of a kitchen blender.

My lower arm and hand went numb. The file fell to the ground. I began to run. I didn't know where, just away from the sound of the gunshots I could still hear.

I made it only a few feet before I fell over, my leather shoes slipping on the dry pine needles covering the ground. In only a matter of seconds, the shooter fired his gun more times than I can remember.

I would later learn how close he came to hitting me. One bullet was found lodged in the front end of my car, near where I had fallen. Another somehow blew through my right shoe -- creating two perfect holes just to the right of the laces and at the tip -- without touching my foot.

How the shooter managed to miss me from such close range I cannot explain. What is important, though, is that he did miss. I got back on my feet and sprinted to the busy road in front of the medical office. After several failed attempts, I managed to flag down a passing car willing to stop for someone in a dark suit frantically waving one arm while the other dangled, covered in blood.

John did not die. We were rushed separately to a nearby hospital, where surgeons patched us back together as best they could. The boy with the gun managed to slip away, leaving behind only his baseball cap, which the police found on a nearby street.

* * *

I SPENT FOUR NIGHTS IN THE HOSPITAL. A contraption of titanium screws and rods jutted from my arm, holding it together like an erector set. The hollow-point bullet left behind a mushroom of flesh erupting from the exit wound 2 inches below my wrist. I hardly slept during the days and nights in the hospital, and many more after them, save for brief Percocet- and Vicodin-induced naps.