LEOMINSTER — Standing with his family in the heart of Disney World, counting down the moments until the sky above the Cinderella Castle would erupt into a thundering chorus of fireworks, Jeff Xavier could feel his anxiety build.
The first rocket soared high above the castle’s white towers before bursting into a vibrant, fiery bloom. A loud clap rippled through the air and Xavier began to shudder. Another firework launched into the air followed by another and another and another. Pop, pop, pop …
Xavier ran to the nearest bathroom.
“I’m looking to the sky, I know they’re just fireworks, I know they’re in the sky above the Disney castle, and I’m in a kid’s park for crying out loud, but my body tells me otherwise,” he said. “I’ve had family in the military and I always wondered what this PTSD thing was. Now I get it. You have absolutely no control at all.”
Xavier stayed in that bathroom, struggling to catch his breath until the fireworks stopped.
He had run into a different bathroom for shelter a little over a year before. It was in a cramped handicap stall where he would hold a dying woman in his arms and nearly bleed to death himself. It was where he was shot four times and would text his brother to tell him that he was dying and that he loved him.
Forty-nine people were killed when a gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. Xavier survived the massacre.
In the weeks and months after the shooting Xavier would recollect his experiences to numerous local and national news outlets.
Describing that night to interviewers, he’d often say the air had smelled like firecrackers.
The Pulse nightclub massacre would hold the record as the nation’s deadliest mass shooting for less than 16 months before another gunman, once again armed with semiautomatic rifles, would fire upon a crowd of spectators at a Las Vegas country music festival two weeks ago. The Oct. 1 death toll set a new high-water mark of 58 people dead.
This time Xavier saw the carnage on television.
“It does bring you back to that place in time. Your palms start getting sweaty and you see all this footage online and on the news. It’s like it’s happening again,” he said. “It’s difficult because I’ve been an advocate, I’ve been traveling, speaking to Congress about gun violence and gun laws, trying to prevent something from happening again, and here it is, it’s happened again. It’s a little difficult to swallow.”
As Xavier explained, the shooting in Las Vegas has been especially frustrating to him as it’s the exact thing he’s been trying to warn people about for the last year. Working with other Pulse survivors, as well as victims of other mass shootings, he’s been advocating for change and sharing his experiences with the hope that the toll from the Las Vegas massacre will not be eclipsed.
Though many would assume the shooting in Orlando would have completely turned Xavier against guns, this is not the case. He even specifies that he is an advocate for gun rights and gun laws instead of gun control because he doesn’t want to be someone who controls the rights of someone else.
“Even after what’s happened to me, I have two bullets still inside me, but I’m still pro-guns. People would think I’m against them, but I’m not. I’m very pro-guns, and I believe every American has the right to arm themselves or defend themselves in any way possible or having hunting equipment if they want it.
“However, should any of us just have the right to walk into a store and buy military grade weapons for mass destruction? No. I don’t agree with that. I don’t believe you and I should be able to say ‘Yeah, I’ll take that weapon of mass destruction that can take out 20 people in five seconds.’ I don’t think that should be available to the public,” he said.
Xavier said he also believes stronger background checks evaluating a person’s mental health should be a prerequisite for buying a gun.
“Our shooter was on the FBI watch list not once, not twice, but three times. You could buy stuff on the black market, but he didn’t. He bought his guns legally. He shopped around,” he said. “What happened in Vegas was a very similar situation. He had some pretty big guns there to do that, and it’s unfortunate. I want all of us to have a right to have guns, but I think it should be certain guns and certain people.”
When Xavier was shot, the bullets ripped through his chest, neck, abdomen and leg.
He now sits with his back to the wall whenever he goes out to eat with friends. He makes sure he knows where the exits are and knows what direction he’d run in if it happened again.
“My other friends who are survivors are the same way as well. PTSD has kicked in,” he said.
Apart from the mental and emotional pain, there is still the obvious physical toll. It was eight surgeries and months of bed rest before Xavier was able to start walking normally again. The pain persists even now, mostly in the leg he was shot in. Extensive nerve damage means he has almost no feeling in his right foot. In the moments when feeling is temporarily restored, the simple contact of one of his hands against his skin can leave him with a sensation he compares to being exposed to fire or sometimes an electric shock.
In November he will undergo three more surgeries to correct this nerve damage, followed by even more months of recovery and physical therapy.
“They’re going to stick metal rods in my toes and up and down my legs and then take them out again,” he said. “I’ll have to learn how to walk again, be in a wheelchair again.”
Xavier said his ongoing recovery has been eased by the flood of encouragement he received from people all over the world. His family and friends reached out to wish him well, but so did strangers from as far away as Australia, Italy and Brazil.
Having grown up in the Twin Cities area and attended Leominster High School for two years, a large percentage of the letters Xavier received were from Leominster students.
He paid a visit to his old high school on Friday to meet with former teachers, and plans to speak with students Monday to thank them personally.
“It was important to come back and say thank you to the people who lifted my spirits while I was away dealing with all this in a hospital room,” he said. “I read all their letters, but it took a while because there were hundreds of them.”
Since getting out of the hospital, Xavier has also been able to meet some of the people who donated the blood that saved his life, thanks to a documentary being filmed about the Pulse shooting. Xavier received transfusions from more than 40 different donors, which has led to his advocating for more people to get involved in donating blood.
Xavier has also been in touch with victims of other national tragedies. He’s become close friends with survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing who visited him while he was still in the hospital, and he hopes to travel soon to Las Vegas and extend this same gesture to survivors of that massacre.
“I now know what it’s like to be dealing with surgery after surgery, medicine, and having to have an IV and morphine. It’s a really big mess. It’s hard losing loved ones and friends you were just with five minutes ago,” he said.
Despite the similarities between Orlando and Las Vegas, Xavier believes the advocacy he and his fellow survivors are doing will make a difference and that the number of advocates will likely grow.
“We have been seeing progress. It’s a little, but it’s working,” he said. “With all that’s been happening, I think it’s helping. As sad as it is, the more tragic stuff that happens, the more people are saying that this is something that needs to be taken care of. Enough is enough.”
Follow Peter Jasinski on Twitter @PeterJasinski53
