FRIENDLY FIRE

Unsettling, episodic memoir exploring a young man’s bout with traumatic brain injury.

On April 7, 2017, just before graduation, college student Paul Rousseau’s life changed dramatically and terribly. In their college room he was accidentally shot in the head by Mark, his best friend and roommate, who possessed way too many guns. The pistol’s bullet pierced two walls, ricocheting off Paul’s head. What happened afterward is debut author Rousseau’s story, written in short spurts as a “buffer” against his traumatic brain injury. Told in sharp, clean prose, with a hard-earned sense of humor, his memoir proceeds in brisk chapters that alternate between those about the accident and aftermath and those about his life, his girlfriend Anna, and his devotion to the Timberwolves basketball team. The bullet drove bone fragments into his brain. In the hospital, facing a craniotomy, he thinks, “I am only just beginning to understand the irreversibility of what happened, the unknown of what’s to come.” He describes his brain as a “supercomputer disguised as ground beef molded into a fist”; during the operation “the surgeon picks debris out of my head like weeds in a garden.” When he’s tested after surgery, “I don’t know the desired outcome. Is it a pass-fail exercise?” He worries about everything, is confused, stutters, and experiences memory loss and brain headaches; his prefrontal cortex is irreparably damaged. Two months later, he graduates. Rousseau narrates his ensuing navigation of the legal issues that arose over his suit against Mark, who took two precious hours before calling for help; expensive insurance bills; frustrating personal injury litigation forms; and therapy sessions. The author does a fine job discussing his challenges and how he overcame them. “Metaphorically,” he writes, “everyone gets shot in the head.…It was my challenge, my duty to heal.”

A powerful, gut-wrenching tale of pain, suffering, and recovery.