The Story
On May 7th, 2019 around 7pm, while on the way to go see Avengers: End Game, my brother and I walked into a Dunkin Donuts in Western Massachusetts. About 20 minutes later, I was being pulled out of a pool of my own blood and loaded into an ambulance, having been stabbed to near death. What was meant to be an evening out with my brother had quickly turned tragic.
For those of you who haven’t heard this story - this is it.
For those of you who have, I hope you don’t mind listening one more time.
Warning - Graphic Imagery Below
I had talked my older brother into taking the evening off from volunteering with the local high school youth group that evening - I had free tickets to the movies, and we both had free coupons for a drink at Dunkin’ (Double Free!).
When we had arrived at the Dunkin’ that was along the way to, and 5 mins from, the movie theater, there seemed to be a couple fighting. Loud, extended blaring of the car horn, coming in and out of the store while yelling “I finish what I start, I finish what I start!”, throwing something at the window.
Anyone who’s grown up inner-city, anyone who’s had a long public transit ride home, anyone who’s walked the city alone at night would understand - keep your head down, but also on a swivel, go about your business, but understand your environment. Any situation can turn dangerous - we can’t ignore it, but it shouldn’t stop us from going about our day. We were there to order a drink and leave - we had a show time to make. I was a bit tense walking in. After the yelling and loud “BANG!” as something hit the window during ordering, I propped myself up on the counter, facing the entire room, to keep an eye on the ongoing commotion behind us - I wouldn’t keep my back to it.
The man seemed to step out, the woman, intoxicated and eating her bagel more with her face than her mouth, came over to us by the cashier, unsolicited. She started to talk to us, putting an elbow in my face, slurring “he’s a bitch!”. She pulled out a chair from the table I had just sat down at, and sat down on the other side herself. I turned away from her, not entirely, careful not to set her off any more than she already was, but enough to convey that I wasn’t interested in talking. Brief “okay’s” and “aha’s” were offered as platitude to a conversation I wasn’t going to be a part of - I had already ordered my coffee, I could see it being made, I was leaving in a moment.
And that’s exactly what happened. My coffee was ready at the opposite counter, so I grabbed it and headed towards the door.
When charging through the first set of doors, coming inside, was the man - probably about 6’2”, neck-tattoos, ~200lbs if I had to guess, with a thin rope or belt in his hands. I backed away from my set of doors to let him blow by, my thought being “he’s going to beat his girl in this store”.
He stepped briskly past me, angry, and to my surprise, instead of taking a left towards the woman, he went to right, towards my brother, who had followed after me to the door, throwing a haymaker and hitting him in the head.
In an instant, I pounced, the tension boiling over. One, two, three punches to his faces after he had sucker punched my brother. His lip busted, his knees buckled, I threw him on the ground and jumped on top, my forearm around his throat, my body weight on top of him - we were “north-south”, my chest and head on top of his head and back, our legs sprawled in opposite directions. As he regained some level of consciousness and stability, his wide fists swung up into my stomach, groin, and thigh areas (as the bruises would later show), but I felt nothing. The adrenaline was present enough for me to feel nothing, but clearing enough for me to think clearly - “The Jesus in my heart stopped me from killing him”, I would later recount, as I wrestled with the man just enough to subdue him, ordering the staff to call the police, taking punches to my gut, holding him without any further violence.
After what felt like a few minutes of struggling, the man’s partner turned on me, pulling the hood of my sweater back, the neckline against my throat. “Go take care of her” my brother said, as he went to take over restraining the man. I let go, and in an instant, a hot flash, a viper, a shadow of movement - I looked down at the inside of my right leg, and against my dark blue jeans, a thick, red, warm slurry came spilling out. “Oh SHIT! I’ve been stabbed”, I yell out to the entire store, to warn everyone around me that what had settled down to a wrestling match had suddenly become a knife fight. My mind was spinning, the blood gushing out through the hole in my pants, thick streams coming down the inside of my pant leg, a soupy mess that I tried to contain by pressing my hands down on myself. “Sit down”, my brother told me, as he came to attend to me, as the police walked in though the door and took control of the situation.
I sat down.
What happened next, what my mind went through, would become the singular tension point of my life after this event - my blood was a puddle around me, my body started to slump, the light started to dim - I was going to die, and I knew it. It all happened so quickly, it made no real sense. I thought I was just getting a coffee and walking out the door. Why did I start rehearsing my goodbyes? Would the last 25 years be over in these past 5 minutes?
My clothes were cut away, a tourniquet was applied. A blood transfusion replenished the over 2 liters of blood I had lost. Emergency vascular surgery was performed to stitch my femoral artery closed shut. “A small voice in my head…” my Ukrainian vascular surgeon would tell me months later in my last follow-up appointment, “…told me to stop scrubbing in for my current surgery and attend to the 25 year old stab victim in critical condition coming into the ER”. 13 staples kept the 8 inch scar together.
In the coming months, my body would play tricks on me - one leg went cold, the other, burning hot. A pain, suddenly, in the middle of the night, right where the knife hit, right where my femoral artery was…had I survived the attack, only to have a staple or stitch come undone and bleed-out in a bed? My mind would play tricks on me - what was the noise, in the middle of the night? Who was this man, who tried to corner me at a Burger King in the rough part of town, triggering my flight or fight yet again? Who was the woman, who struck up a conversation with me at a restaurant in Boston, who said “she was fighting with her boyfriend and that’s why she was here alone”, as pins and needle ran down my entire body, my skin burning hot, my vision blurring, as I looked for my way out, and fast.
I could hardly walk after the incident. Bending to sit down on the toilet was difficult. My college roommate’s dad, a medical professional, came immediately when I had a worry - I’d strip naked, and he’d peel back the gooey dressings and examine the ugly-looking, deformed line through my leg that was my scar. Memories flooded back in - laying down on the floor of that Dunkin’, coated in my own blood, a writhing wet mess, and seeing the coffee I had ordered on a table 10 ft away from me - all I could do is beg “water. please, water”. Embarrassing. Pitiful. Broken. Alone.