PART 2 -The Incident

Chapter Six -----The Phone Call

      Some events, like the birth of a child, impact us so much that they are ingrained in our memory.  We can recall every detail. Most are positive events but sometimes there are negative events that affect our recall for details.

      I had such a life-changing event on January 10, 2010.

     Joe had just returned from the Alabama National Championship Game in Pasadena, California. The game was played on Thursday so his flight brought him back on the following Saturday. At that time, Matt was living in my grandmother’s old house she had moved when she sold her property to the school. My brother and I had inherited Mama’s old house, so Matt was living there rent free. It was better than dealing with the arguments on a daily basis.

       Joe and I had just settled in for the night when the phone rang. Another late-night Phone call, what now? When I answered and said hello, I heard a sweet female voice on the other end speak these words, “Mrs. Hobby, I am a nurse at the UAB trauma unit downtown. We have your son Matt. He has been shot.”

     What? Did I just hear her right? He has been shot, not arrested? I think I asked her if he was okay or even alive. I’m not exactly sure because I was in shock. I do remember her saying he was conscious and wanted to talk to me. I recall his words because they were so bizarre coming from a person who had just been shot. He said, “Mom, I don’t think I got a chance to lock the door to Mama’s house when I left. Please check on it before you come down here.”  Maybe that was God’s way of making me stop at the house before I went to UAB, because otherwise we would have bypassed the house on our normal route. I was not prepared for what I encountered when I drove up.

      Joe and I would find out later that Matt had been a victim of a home invasion. Unknown to us, he had robbed two pharmacies and stolen several thousand dollars in drugs, mostly oxycodone his drug of choice. I suppose word of his robberies and the possibility that he held quite a stash of drugs had gotten out on the street because someone broke into his house the night of January 10, 2010 and approached Matt at point blank range with an AK 47 assault rifle. Matt said the intruder pointed the gun at his head but he grabbed the barrel just as the shot went off. Matt’s hand moved the barrel ever so slightly so that the bullet entered his left shoulder. The doctors speculated that the bullet penetrated his shoulder, hit his clavicle upon entry, ricocheted down and exited out his back below his left lung. It was a miracle that he was not killed or even lost his left arm as a result of the gunshot.  I have lost count of the number of miracles in my son’s life.