David Montero: Aurora, Colo. » Each morning for the past few days, Austin Hogan has carefully pulled out his clarinet, put in a reed and played music in the hospital room. His audience, lying on her back, is quiet and lets it wash over her. The first day he did it, Hogan played something from Mozart. The next day, she asked for something faster. For Petra Anderson — whose survival is nothing short of a miracle, says her doctor — the music delivers something the tubes snaking into her arm from the IV drip simply can’t.
It feeds her soul.
Before July 20, the 22-year-old was known by those in the music world and by family and friends as a gifted composer and violinist whose tendencies leaned toward modern composition and who told her sister on at least one occasion that “Bach was boring.”
But then the shooting happened. She was struck in the arm and face by shotgun pellets by a gunman who attacked the crowd during the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
One pellet entered her skull, traveled with a slight curvature on its trajectory and managed to miss any vital areas of the brain. In the last seven days, she has had brain surgery, been visited by actor Christian Bale and recovered enough to walk around, scold her mother for trying to help her with putting toothpaste on the brush and asked for a meal of steak and broccoli at the Aurora Regional Medical Center.
(thanks, Bill)
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