Five years after he was shot in the head by his best friend, PAUL ROUSSEAU writes a heartbreaking letter to the man who still haunts him

A month before he was to graduate from St. Thomas University in Minnesota, Paul Rousseau was accidentally shot in the head by his roommate and best friend, Mark.

Miraculously, he survived the shooting and waited – bleeding profusely and confused – for two hours as Mark lied to authorities at the university and refused to call an ambulance, fearing the consequences for his own future.

The two have not spoken since then, even though Paul refused to press charges.

But in his new book Friendly Fire: A Broken Memoirhe has written a heartbreaking letter to Mark for the first time, in which he tries to understand not only what happened that night, but also how a friendship that meant so much to him could be so irreparably destroyed in one short moment.

Mark had acquired five guns – legally and with permits – even though St. Thomas had a zero-tolerance gun ban on campus

Dear Mark,

“What the hell. That was weird, man,” he begins, and goes on to imagine what Mark might have done in his room that caused the gun to accidentally discharge – ripping through two walls before hitting Paul’s skull, permanently disabling him.

‘What were you? Showing off? Alone in your room? Proving something?

“Look how cool I am, so big and strong, breaking the rules. I have to wipe my piece, put it to bed. You never needed that. You were funny and lovable and charming, and you attracted everyone.”

Over the course of their three-year friendship, Mark had acquired a total of five guns—legally and with permits. Paul didn’t mind. The two were inseparable. “We’re best friends,” he writes. “I love him.”

But that night in april 2017 would change the course of both their lives.

‘They were sitting on the couch, chatting and laughing, with the TV on, when Mark went back to his room. Paul thought he was going to take a nap.

A few moments later, Mark bent over to pick something up from the floor—“a piece of paper, maybe, a dead battery, or a guitar pick, I don’t know. I don’t hear it. I don’t see it. But there’s something coming through the wall toward me.”

Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir is published by HarperCollins

Since the shooting, Paul’s days have been filled with painful surgeries and generally learning to cope with life with a traumatic brain injury.

He describes the feeling as if he was ‘being thrown into a pool of cough syrup. Drenched in thick liquid while wearing layers of yarn’.

As he struggled to get up, Mark came running out of his room. “I didn’t know it was loaded!” he said as he stood there, his limp hand gripping the gun.

Panicking, he tried to buy time by telling Paul to take a shower. Then he laid him on the bed and disappeared. Paul later discovered that he had hidden his firearms in his car: the one he had just fired, a small-caliber rifle, a second firearm, and an AR-15, “along with enough ammunition to outfit a small militia.”

Over the next two hours—as Paul drifted in and out of consciousness—the college’s public safety officer arrived to check on the cause of the fire alarm. The bullet had triggered it as it ripped through the wall.

Mark lied, he said he smoked, and when questioned further, that he had burned something in the oven. When she saw blood on the floor, he said it was from a ‘really bad nosebleed’.

Later, Paul woke up and heard voices from the other room: Mark had called their friends Keith and Rachel, who were begging Mark to call an ambulance.

“I will, I will,” Mark said. “Just wait. Just give me a second…”

Paul now remembers that it was two hours before Mark called the emergency services. That night they spoke for the last time – although they have only seen each other once since, via video call when he was contesting an insurance claim.

“I started hyperventilating, looking around like crazy, sitting on my hands, rocking back and forth, making little movements that a captive animal would make. All that, and you weren’t even physically in the room. Then my lawyer, angry with me, told the judge that I needed a fair warning the next time you were around. A trigger warning, if you will.”

Paul says he forgave Mark the moment he was shot – but that was the last day the couple spoke

But he says he still sees his old friend in his dreams all the time.

‘The dreams are almost identical… as we get closer this grainy sick aura fills the space around us, the air can feel the tension, the horror of what has happened, though it is never explicitly stated. I don’t think the universe ever wants us within spitting distance again. In these scenarios we could very well cause the apocalypse.’

He adds, “I know you’re sorry. We’re past our apologies. I forgave you the moment it happened.”

Since the shooting, Paul’s days have been filled with painful surgeries, a lengthy “humane” personal injury claim, lots of therapy, and learning to accept life with a traumatic brain injury.

Mark graduated from college after being briefly expelled from school despite the campus’ zero-tolerance gun ban.

“It’s hard not to speculate,” Paul writes. “Perhaps Mark appealed the expulsion and won. He has money. He could have hired a lawyer to fight the university’s decision. That happens all the time.”

And to Mark he writes, “If every good memory I had of us was a lake, April 7 dumped a barrel of toxic waste into it, and tore up the entire body of water. Maybe a few things can be filtered out, but that lake is not salvageable. Are you glad I didn’t die?”

Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir by Paul Rousseau is published by HarperCollins