Woman survives mysterious shooting

LONG ROAD: RECOVERY HAS TAKEN MONTHS

KERNERSVILLE

It was the night of April 16, and Rhonda Parrish was heading home to Greensboro after the annual family celebration in Linville Falls for the opening of trout season. Parrish was going 65 mph on Interstate 40 near the Conover exit outside of Hickory, her son, Christopher, next to her.

Suddenly, she felt a strange sensation.

It was almost, she said, as if she was sitting to her own right and her body was on the left. At the same time, she heard a reverberating noise.

Parrish, a registered nurse and a clinical-practice manager for Gentiva in Kernersville, stayed calm and pulled the car from the left lane to the right shoulder and told her son to call 911.

Blood was pouring from her left side, and glass from the driver’s side window was embedded in her arm and her hair. She wondered if she had suffered an aneurysm or if rubble from road work had hit her car.

It turned out, as X-rays would later show, that a bullet had entered her left mandible, splintering the bone and

sending bullet fragments into her

skull.

Though Parrish, 55, acknowledges that being able to celebrate this holiday season is nothing short of a miracle, in the past seven months she’s had to cope with everything from her injuries to her finances to her fears.

She is most happy, she said, that nothing happened to 27-year-old Christopher.

“It was as if God put a bubble around my son,” Parrish said.

It was Christopher Parrish who applied pressure with his shirt to stop the bleeding until emergency medical professionals arrived. Parrish herself was afraid, she said, that her carotid artery had been damaged because she was bleeding so profusely.

“It was very, very random. In the beginning, we did not know if she had been shot or if debris had hit her. She is very lucky,” said Kristy Towery, the Conover Police Department investigator assigned to the case.

Because the bullet fragments are lodged in Parrish’s head, police do not know the caliber. But they do believe the bullet came from a high-powered rifle.

“We still do not know what happened, if it was a passing vehicle or someone shooting out of the woods,’’ Towery said. “There has not been one single lead of promise, but it is still an active case.”

Parrish was transferred to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center from the emergency room in Conover. For weeks she was unable to drive, and she had to take short-term disability, which cut her pay in half.

Doctors were unable to remove the bullet fragments without potentially paralyzing her. Parrish has learned to live with knowing she still has the fragments in

her.

She has dealt with mounds of paperwork, such as figuring out how to get her purse from her impounded Nissan Sentra, as well as the unanticipated expense of medical care, and driving back and forth to Wake Forest Baptist for physical therapy, which continues today.

Parrish said she feels blessed to have survived the odd circumstance and to count so many friends as her supporters. Her employer has a foundation that helps others in crisis. The J.T. Ennis Foundation paid for three months of her rent and paid her dental bills to repair two teeth that were cracked.

Meanwhile, her East Forsyth High School Class of 1973 created a special “voice quilt” for her.

“It looks like a jewelry box. You open it up and many, many of my classmates had called and recorded messages for me,” Parrish said.

Her mother wrote to Birds & Blooms magazine requesting a card shower from fellow readers. Parrish is still getting cards from the appeal.

She said she is amazed that her scarring is light, almost non-existent until she shows the faint lines on her left arm from where the glass slivers penetrated or the healed hole in the skin over her left jaw.

She said she finds she has trouble remembering peoples’ names, something she did not have a problem with previously. She has only driven past the area once since the incident and it disturbed her so much that she is using a different route now when she heads west.

The incident has left her feeling great empathy toward soldiers shot in the line of duty.

“I immediately was surrounded by this strong network. I can’t imagine how it must be for soldiers who do not have that,” Parrish said.

Her oldest son, Marty Parrish, the program director at the Reidsville YMCA and a basketball coach at Rockingham Community College, said this holiday season is a time of reflection for his family.

“We didn’t have to wait very long to be thankful. My mom is so strong that I don’t even have words to describe her strength,’’ he said. “It sounds so cliché, but the whole thing has made us want to slow down and appreciate life.”

Parrish said she remains optimistic about the reason for her survival.

“God has plans for me. Now I have to figure out what those are,” she said. “Now when I hear people putting stuff off for tomorrow, I tell them, ‘Don’t. Don’t wait.’”

Cyoung9@triad.rr.com