A word of warning that today's episode contains descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening. Hi, how are you doing? Good. I left you four or five messages. Busy day. Busy day. Do you remember on the Duke's a hazard there was the sheriff? Do you remember what his name was? No. Rosco P. Coltrain. Oh, I remember it was Roscoe. Do you remember what the P stood for? No. Was it Philip?

Yoke-too? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm happy. My friend Suzanne is calling me back.

I can't take this to the top. No, she's not.

How did you.

Know I was lying?

How did you know I was lying?

You sounded too loving.

I'm.

Jonathan Goodstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, The Budget Motel. Right after the break. Nick tells me he doesn't consider himself to be a writer. He works as a landscaper. But several years ago, he felt compelled to write about an event that derailed his life. The story's title?

What it's like to be shot.

Thirty years ago, nick was shot in the stomach by a coworker, a guy named Andy. Nick was 21 years old, and ever since that day, he's continued to tell versions of what happened. In his 20s, it was a good story to tell in a bar.

Packaged in a way to impress girls.

In his 30s, it became a flex, something to give him that tough guy quality he lacked compared to the hunters and brawlers he grew up with in Idaho. In his 40s, he honed the story to the written version. I like Nick's writing so much, I asked him if he'd read the story aloud to me. Would you mind reading it?

You want me to just start from the beginning?

Could you? Yeah. It all begins with nick and his coworker Andy in Burley, Idaho. They were there for an out-of-town irrigation contract. Andy was originally from Burley, and so he invited some high school friends over to drink beer in the room he and nick were sharing at the Budget Motel. I'll let nick take it from here.

The guys had brought in a nine millimeter automatic for show and tell. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was in fact stolen or purchased illegally. I wasn't particularly curious about the weapon, having had my share of firearms fun growing up in Polcatel. We littered the sagebrush Hills with spent casings. I remember sitting on the edge of the motel bed across from Andy. Andy's eyes were on the gun, but not down-range. I was down-range. Andy dropped the magazine, charged the slider. It's cool to charge a handgun. It makes cool sound and feels good. Andy was about to dry fire but had not checked the chamber. I leaned to the left about to say, Dude, don't point that thing at me. Dude. Damn. My first thought was, Damn it, we were so fired. The gun has gone off in our room. I looked down toward my lap and noticed a wist of smoke coming from the torn hole in the beltline of my pants. I reached around with my left hand and felt a wet spot in the small on my back. Holy fucking shit. I've just been shot in and out right fucking through me.

Holy shit. Noting the proximity of the wet spot to my spine, I quickly stood up to see if my legs worked. They did. Andy rushed the gun over to Israel who had brought it. Say you did it, man. Israel quickly took a knee in front of me, trying to get me to hold the weapon. Dude, say you shot yourself. Fucking call 911. The police report, written by one of what Berley consider their finest, says that I reported the wound accidentally self-inflicted upon his arrival. I remember saying, I've been shot. It was an accident. As the cop casually stroled in with a stupid bored look on his face. A lot of the actual agony is beyond memory. I can remember what the pain led me to think. Okay, if this is the end, let's get it over already. Bring on the dark fade or the bright light. There was no fear of death, only the impatient anticipation of relief. I was balling and blubbering like a toddler that had fallen off a swing. Every story I'd read of soldiers slowly dying on battlefields, crying out for their mothers made sense. There is a very real need for mommy that supersedes any macho imprinting at this level of helplessness.

My pleas for morphine were denied. Instead, I was impaled with a catheter and my urethra and an NG tube into my nose and down my throat. Somewhere, I found in myself a cooperative attitude toward these brutes. I even reported the fact I was wearing contact lenses as they rubbed the orange goo on my belly and shaved my pubic hair. They plucked out the lenses before I got wheeled into the OR. Everything suddenly got calmer there. My only company was a gentle voice man who said, I'm Dr. Lurel Feinstein. I'll be your anesthesiologist. Just spread them to this. The nurses in ICU took an icy tone with me. They weren't going to mommy some young man in with gunshot wounds who probably had it coming. I did get a sarcastic, Oh, poor baby, when I cried during my first wound abreadment. That was the daily routine of filling ribbons of cotton gauze into the bullet holes with a long swab. Twice a day, they'd pull out the gauze along with all the dead tissue dried to it, then stuffed new gauze in. I got used to it and it became less painful. As with most gross things about your body, you eventually come to enjoy it, like picking your nose.

The first visitor was a blurry image, not because of the meds, but because of the earlier foolishness of having my contacts removed before surgery. It's my dad who is here. I make a crack to bring Levity to the ICU. Something quick from a Western maybe. They got me, Pa. There are only tears.

And here, with his father's tears, is how nick has always ended the story, a cutdown hero being wheped over by his dad. But now that he's in his 50s, nick doesn't see himself as the hero of this story at all. Instead, he sees someone else as the true hero of that day. It's not Andy or his friend, Israel. They mostly seemed concerned with not getting in trouble.

And I didn't hear a word from them since that day. There was no visit in the hospital. If I had accidentally shot somebody, I would have been beside myself with apology and just begging for forgiveness. But I didn't hear a thing from those guys.

I didn't hear a thing from those guys either. I reached out to both Andy and Israel to get their version of the story, but never heard back. The cops were indifferent. The hospital workers, coldly efficient. Nick felt alone and angry. He'd been blamed for his own injury and then abandoned. No one actually cared about what he was going through at all, with the exception of one person, a friend of Andy's whose name nick never even caught, but who he refers to as The Kid.

I didn't know this kid. He was just in the periphery of everybody that was hanging out. So all of a sudden, I'm shot. I can just see this kid's face and he's crying. He's looking down at me and he's asking if there's anything he can do, like get me a towel or something. The looks on other people's faces was one of detachment and cold, like they were looking at a squirrel hitting the road or something. And he was the one that you could just tell. He was legitimately scared, not about getting in trouble, but for me.

And you're able to, in that moment, you were able to read all of that?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I think everything slows down to where some things are sparkling clear. Yeah. Like if you've ever been in a car accident or whatever, everything seems to go in slow motion. And that's the thing that still sticks with me is somebody just as scared as I was.

A kind look, a towel, not exactly Superman level of heroism. But nick insists that because the gestures came at one of the scariest moments of his life and because everyone else was offering nothing, this something, even though it was a small something, felt like a lot.

And so in that moment, him and I were not strangers. It's a feeling like I don't want to die alone. And here's one person that's not a stranger. And so.

30 years later, what nick wants is to find that kid, that sympathetic kid who cried and offered him a towel and simply thank him. But where the search takes us is somewhere neither nick nor I could have anticipated. So we're going to do it. Okay. Wow. Yeah, we're going to try to find this kid, I think. After the break, we try to find this kid, I think. Hello, can't you hear me?

I can now.

More importantly, can you see me?

I can see you.

Okay, it's not more important, really. I asked nick to check in over a video because I have some news. In order to get the name of the sympathetic kid, I contacted the Sheriff's Department and got the police report from the day nick was shot. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I wanted to share it with you. Nick's not seen the report since the shooting happened 30 years ago. I send it over and once again, nick reads an account of the day, but this time from the perspective of the police officer on duty.

On the above date, I was sent to the Budget Motel room 437 in reference to a subject being shot in the stomach. I asked nick what had happened. He stated that he had shot himself while looking at a gun.

When the cops interrogated Andy, he also blamed nick, who when pressed, came clean.

He stated that he didn't intend for it to go off.

Then there are the accounts of everyone else who'd been in the room that day. There's Andy's friend, Israel.

Israel heard Andy clicked the gun but I wasn't sure what had happened.

And two other guys, someone named Jason.

He then saw the gun in Andy's hand with an expression like he didn't expect it.

To go off. And someone named Jared.

He told me that nick had a very surprised look on his face and that no one really knew what had happened. We feel that the information that we received that there was no intention on hurting anyone and that the shooting was an accidental shooting, the subjects were released after obtaining statements.

Well.

nick had a very surprised look on his face. I'm sure I did.

The names Jason and Jared are both unfamiliar to nick. So to our search for the sympathetic kid.

It's got to be one of those two guys.

So what's going on? Well... The following week, nick and I talk again. This time, though, nick has reached out to me because he has some news to share.

It's been five days or whatever since I contacted Jared.

After I sent nick the police report, he spent the rest of the day obsessing. He was so close to finding the person he thought about for so long that he decided to take matters into his own hands and do some digging. While Jason's last name was incredibly common, Jared's last name was unique. So nick typed it into Facebook, and a Jared popped up who was living in that same part of Idaho.

And it looks like he's got a teenage son that looks exactly like my memory of what he looked like. I sent him this very generic message to throw the line out there like I was trying to nut a butterfly. Hi, Jared. You may not know me at all, but I'm trying to find someone with your name that lived in Burley back in 1993. You might be someone who showed me a great deal of kindness during an accident that happened at the budget.

Jared's profile didn't seem all that active. So nick tried sending a message to his wife as well. And?

She responded. She says, Oh, wow, I think he's told me that story. I'll let him know and tell him to message you.

And a couple of days later, Jared did.

Yeah, it's me. I have a lot of memories of that day. Not all good. Then I say, Me too. I know this is a lot to hit you with out of the blue. I think you were the one most worried about me. You asked if I needed a towel. Was that you? And he responds, Yes, I remember getting a towel for your back, making sure the exit wound was clean. I remember staying there till the EMTs got there. It's like it happened yesterday. Then I said, I've been waiting three decades to thank you for that. In the chaos, your kindness remains with me. You don't know what people are made of until something like that happens. You are a good soul. And he says, Thank you. But even though weird shit happens, a life is a life. Your kind words mean a lot. I did have some flashbacks to that day. Honestly, I didn't remember your name because the chaos started 30 seconds after I met you. I can still see the fear in your eyes. I only did what I hope someone would do for me. Then I said, I'm glad to be alive.

I'm now 51. Jared says, I'm glad you were doing good. I will message you tomorrow. Just got off work and doing the dinner thing. Thank you for your kind words.

But the next day, when nick raised the prospect of actually speaking on the phone, Jared stopped answering. Eventually, nick got another message from Jared's wife. Good morning, nick. Jared knows it was a terrible experience for you and has no doubt you went through hell as a result, but it was traumatic for him as well. Over the last 30 years, he's dealt with it in his own way, and he wants it to remain in his past. Again, thank you for your kindness and for thanking him after all these years. On the one hand, nick is glad to have finally found Jared and been able to thank him. But on the other hand, he's a little disappointed. Their exchange was so brief. Whatever nick was looking for, it seems like he hasn't found it. And for the next couple of months, that's where it sits. But all the while, as it turns out, just as nick had been wanting to speak with Jared, there's been someone badly wanting to speak with him, someone who's always hovered just outside the story's frame. Her name doesn't appear in Nick's written account, nor does it show up in the police report.

This, although she was present at the time of the shooting, if only has a voice on the other end of a phone line.

The phone rang and someone answers. And what I hear is I hear.

Oh, shit. I've been shot.

At the time nick was shot, he had a girlfriend, Maggie. Nick had suggested I reach out to Maggie as a way of getting more background on that time. But over the course of talking with Maggie, it became clear that she had more to offer than just background. Nick had first met Maggie back when she was 13 and he was 15. He noticed her at a friend's house. A spiky haired punk girl hunched over a Ouija board trying to summon the spirit of Nancy Spungin'. Maggie thought nick was funny and a, quote, champion grade dork. The two became friends. And several years later, when Maggie was 19, she and nick started dating. To save money, they moved in together. It wasn't long after that that nick set off on his ill fated trip to Burley. On the evening of June third 1993, Maggie picked up the phone and called nick at his room in the budget motel, and she happened to call at the exact moment the shot was fired.

The phone rang and someone answers and I say, Is nick there? Is nick available? And what I hear before this person responds is I hear, Oh, my God, I've been shot. Call 911. I've been shot. By moments I missed the. So in my mind's eye, I have no context for this. It doesn't occur to me that someone in the room has actually been shot. I thought, well, maybe someone in the room was recounting a cop show that something like that. They said, He can't come to the phone right now.

Not only was Maggie there, at the Budget Motel, but she was also there beyond the point where nick ends his story. She was there for his long recovery process in the months afterwards.

Yes.

And so, you ended up becoming the de facto caregiver?

Yes, that's correct.

I mean, you were just 19. That's a lot to take on.

Yeah, that was a really... It was a tumultuous... It was a challenging time, and nick had a lot of emotions. He was really, really fucking angry. He was very depressed. He took a lot of it out on me and was not very kind to me.

At all.

At all.

So while nick was dealing with the trauma of being shot, Maggie was dealing with the trauma of dealing with nick. She was the one to stand by him in the months to come. If anyone was truly sympathetic, truly a good soul, it was Maggie. Maggie and nick broke up not long after the accident, but they've remained friends for all these years. Even so, over the last three decades, they've never talked about that time. Nick says it's easier not to. He wasn't the best version of himself. That makes a conversation with Maggie a harder one to have than the one with Jared. But it potentially makes it a more valuable conversation too. And Maggie says there's a lot she's never said to nick that she's now finally ready to say.

Hello, my old friend. Come on in.

And so, we all meet up one summer afternoon at Maggie's townhouse. How are you feeling?

I'm nervous. Yeah, well, at least you'reunderstandably.

We head upstairs to Maggie's living room. Her place feels cozy and inviting. The walls are full of art.

I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine because I'm nervous.

Good for you.

nick, do you want a beer?

I would love a beer. I was like.

Fantasizing that you would ask me that.

Maggie and nick sat beside each other on the couch, and Maggie begins the story of that day from her perspective.

What I remember was that I called.

When Maggie called the Budget Motel that day, she heard the chaos in the background. But it wasn't until later that night that she understood what had happened. Nick's boss called to tell her that nick was in surgery for a gunshot wound. Maggie got in the car to drive the several hours to see him in the hospital.

There was thunder and lightning, storms raging, and the windshield wipers, and the visibility was terrible, and I was blasting social distortion. It's the high plains in Idaho. It's like that sagebrushy. And not knowing I remember driving, not knowing if you were going to be alive or dead when I got there. In the.

Immediate aftermath, there was a rush of family that arrived to visit nick in the hospital, and Maggie receded into the background.

In a way, it was like everyone shows up while there's all of this fanfare. And then the day to day, everyone fucking dissipates.

And that's what we're here to talk about. The time after everyone else had dissipated, and it was just nick and Maggie. For a while, nick was unable to leave the house. His dad was a pretty big stoner, and so he gifted nick a huge bag of weed to help in his recovery.

Every morning, I'd roll a doobie and watch the cartoon version of Beatle Juice or whatever, and the rest of the day just had a nice float to it.

It was.

Helpful, but I also think I was going stir crazy.

As a part of his recovery, nick was forced to wear a colostomy bag, an inflatable sack attached to his stomach. It was uncomfortable and cumbersome and made him feel old before his time. Nick had to lean on Maggie for help.

I apologize for that.

For having a colostomy?

Yeah.

Like the colostomy was secondary. On the one hand, yeah, it was really hard to wake up covered in shit sometimes. But also what made it hard is then that you would be really mad. I'm trying to manage your anger. I'm trying to get me cleaned up. I've got to get to... I start at 7:00 AM.

It turns out that at the time, Maggie was in nursing school. Aside from the full-time job of taking care of nick, she also had an internship at the hospital and was taking an overwhelming course load. It was a lot.

Thanks for taking care of me. I'm sorry it sucked so bad.

Although nick says the words he's supposed to, Thank you. I'm sorry, he still doesn't fully understand what he's saying thank you and sorry for. So Maggie tries to tell him.

It was really shitty. You were really awful to me.

I can't believe that.

I'm feeling a lot of emotion. That was hard, dear. I was.

In awe of you for being so focused and driven and organized and also felt like, Oh, this person is out of my league because you were just… I.

Couldn't really keep up with it. I think you were mad at me about it.

Yeah, that's probably true.

Maggie sits with her legs tucked up on the couch looking right at nick. Nick stares ahead at the wall.

You were smoking weed in that back room all day watching TV, and you wouldn't even open the blinds. You'd sit there in the dark. It could be sunny. We weren't compatible, but we were stuck. You were sick. You were so fucking depressed and angry at the world.

nick was angry at Andy and Israel for abandoning him. He was angry at himself for taking the blame with the cops. He was angry that he was in this situation at all, bedridden and confronting his mortality at 21. He directed all of that at Maggie.

I wasn't such a great person as far as I think there was a lot of rage.

Yeah. Do you remember what you would say?

I don't remember the exact things I would say, but I can just imagine being in blind rage and just saying awful shit.

I feel really self-conscious even saying it out loud.

Yeah.

Or sometimes you would talk, I would say, how you fantasized killing me.

Really?

I don't remember if it was your birthday or if there was something that was good, and I remember I made you a bunch of cookies. You were so fucking mad I made you goddamn cookies. Like, why would you want cookies? You fucking smashed them.

Really? I don't remember that.

The first time I read Nick's account of that day, I was struck by his ability to recall the Minutia. Given that, it's surprising to hear what he doesn't remember.

I didn't think you would ever do anything on it, but I also lived with just a lot of fucking rage and hate in my direction. And like, oddly, I understood how and why you were so mad. And so in my own fucked up way, I gave it a pass.

nick might have forgotten some of the painful details, but he does remember the moment he crossed a line. Do you remember what that was? I do.

Oh, tell me about that.

We were in a fight. It was a raging moment. I don't know what the fuck it was about, but I pushed you up against the wall and I had my hand run your throat.

Oh.

Yeah. You remember this?

I do know.

For the first time, Maggie breaks eye contact. She covers her face with her hands.

Why did I allow this shit?

Well, you said, Get the fuck out right now. I think it was what you said, and I agreed with you.

It reads like domestic violence.

I know. It dawned on me like, Wow, this is really fucked up. What am I doing? And you were looking at me like, Yeah, what the fuck are you doing? Do you remember that? And I.

Had so much empathy for what you were going through. And as I sit here hearing that now, it's like, Where was my fucking empathy for myself? Who looked out for me? And why wasn't I looking out for me? That's this fucking recurring pattern that just lived out. And I think that's why I'm feeling all the things that I'm feeling that it's like, Holy fuck. This is just another iteration of something that was a part of this, my own story for years.

Maggie, I'm sorry. I don't know. I just... I'm honest when I.

Say that.

Reflecting as much as I cared to over the years, it dawned on me more and more the load of shit that you dealt with. But that said, it wasn't just a few minutes ago that I realized how fucking heavy that was. That was hard to hear, but necessary. I can't, I'm not defensive because it's true. I know that for a fact. It was true. I don't want to remember myself that way of how ugly I became. I really want to flip this story around to where I'm a better person.

Than I was.

The way nick has always framed the story around that day at the Budget Motel, he was the victim. A horrible painful thing happened to him through no fault of his own. He could have been paralyzed. He could have died. But when you widen the story's frame beyond the motel room to include Nick's recovery to include Maggie, it isn't so simple.

I, on some level, knew I was just in proximity, and I was the safest person. And I cared about you. I still care about you.

I care about you. Yeah, yeah.

You were so angry.

I still am. It's not just the 1993 gunshot that made me pissed off about everything. It's just everything going back to 1973.

I remember even before we were in a relationship, you so wanted to connect with your dad.

Throughout Nick's childhood, his father was a largely absent figure. He looked at nick as an impediment of the things he really wanted to do: party, drink, have a good time.

You would talk about how your dad would be in the bar and you were a little kid, and it's your time to be with your dad. You'd be sitting in the van for hours.

Just wait for me in the car. If you see a cop or whatever with a flashlight or something, don't be crying.

Don't be crying.

Okay, dad, I promise I won't be crying if a cop shines a flashlight in here wondering what I'm doing alone and waiting outside of our...

Okay, so fast forward to being shot and not letting the cops know what's just sucking it up.

Yeah, that's a lesson I learned early on.

nick had been taught early on how to shield others from blame. It makes sense that he, of all people, would have been quick to tell the police he shot himself.

I was just doing what you told me to do, dad.

It's hard to get someone who's ignoring you to even notice your anger, whether it's the guy who shot you in a motel room or the man who was supposed to be raising you. And so you vent your anger on the people you think might actually be able to absorb it, even if they're not the ones who deserve it. That's not an excuse, but it's an explanation. When nick first reached out for my help in finding Jared, his dad had died only a few weeks earlier. Hearing all this, that timing starts to feel like more than just a coincidence. Nick's relationship with his dad is tied up with that day. Nick brings up that memory of his dad showing up at the hospital right after he was shot.

I think you had called him or whatever, so he drove-.

I think I got a hold of him at the bar.

Wow. He drove- Drunk. -drunk probably two hours. There's a couple of moments in my life with dad where I felt like we were locked in and that wasn't just me waiting around to get his attention. And that was one of those moments.

When- You got his attention.

Yeah, and I could tell he was crying.

He.

Was so upset. He was so upset.

So that's just like one of those one times where I was the focus of his attention.

You're one of the very few people from that time in my life where I kept a thread, any thread. If it were somebody else, we wouldn't be sitting here in my living room.

I'm so honored by that. Thank you. Because I don't know if I deserve it. You are.

The.

Hero of this story.

The work.

Of being a person is to recognize patterns in ourselves, to see the things we do over and over, and to try to create new patterns, cast ourselves in new roles, and not just the role of hero. Nick, for his part, is working to be more aware of his anger.

Healing my loved ones from it. How do I channel it without hurting people near me? What I don't often realize is how much it radiates and fucking penetrates other people.

As for Maggie, she wants to protect herself to set up her life so that she's the priority.

I'm trying to. I'm almost 50. For the first time in my life, I'm trying to.

Yeah, yeah. This is the story of a man who was shot. I've just told you one version. A different one than if nick were telling it himself. A different one than if he tried to lay it all out again 20 years down the road. But for now, nick and Maggie hug. And while I pack up to head back to my hotel, the two of them go out to sit on Maggie's balcony to enjoy the rest of the day, to soak in what they can before the sun goes down.

Now that the furniture is returning to.

Its goodwill home. Now that the last month's rent is.

Scheming with.

The.

Damaged.

Deposit, take.

This moment to decide if we meant it, if we tried or felt around for far too much, or things that.

Accidentally touched, or felt around for far too much, or things that accidentally touched, or things that accidentally touched, or things that accidentally touched.

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by senior producer Kallila Holt, and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production assistants by Mohini McGauker. Editorial guidance from Emily Kondin. Special thanks to Annie Minof, Laura Morris, Lauren Silverman, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, Michael Hurst, Katie Kondin, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia. Com/heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Heavyweight is a Spotify original podcast. I'd also like to give a shout out to another Spotify podcast that we love around here on the show. It's called Science Versus. The host, Wendy Zuckerman, is so much fun to listen to, and I always end up learning so much. Each episode, she tackles a different myth or fad like vaping or hypnosis, alternative drinks, and she dives into the science to deliver up the facts. Science Versus is available anywhere you listen to podcasts, and you really should check it out. You should also follow us on Twitter @Hevyweight, on Instagram @Hevyweight Podcast, or email us @Hevyweight@gimletmedia.

Com. You can also follow our show on Spotify and tap the bell to receive notifications when new episodes drop. We'll be right back with a new episode just after Thanksgiving. Happy toyky day.