"Some guy came and yelled, 'Get out! Get out! Get out!'" Brad said. "I don't know why, but we all just trusted to just go at that point in time. Thank God, because a few weeks later, Marshall went back to look. They'd cut a big hole in the metal thing that we were hiding in, where all the bullets had gone through, right where Lauren and I were."
Brad and Marshall sent Lauren ahead and made sure everyone got out during a pause in the gunfire. When it resumed, they took cover again. As Lauren ran, someone near her got hit, and she dove under a car and hid. Brad and Marshall ran during the next pause and found a gap in a fence. Marshall went to get his car at his office about a mile away and told Brad he'd meet them at Hooters. Brad went to look for Lauren.
Finally, after about 11 minutes, he reached her by phone. By that time, the shooting had stopped, but no one knew it was over. Brad was ahead of Lauren but couldn't go back because police had set up a perimeter. Cars were speeding in every direction as people tried to escape and get the wounded to the hospital. Brad eventually found Lauren with a bunch of people behind a big electrical box near the airport. They took off for Tropicana Avenue, trying to find Marshall and his car.
"There was a cop on the corner at Trop, and he said, 'Keep going. Keep going. We don't know what's happening. Just keep running,' " Brad said. "So we did. And finally [Marshall] got us, and we all got the heck out of there."
* * * * *
Fifty-eight people were killed and hundreds injured in the worst mass shooting in modern American history, and the people of Las Vegas rallied around each other. Including Smith, one of 10 players locked down in a restaurant at The Cosmopolitan until about 2 a.m., the Golden Knights visited victims, families, first responders and blood donors.
"The entire city responded in a way that really does remind me that Vegas is home to a lot of people," Lauren said. "It's not just a tourist destination. Thousands of people showed their support by donating to the blood banks and giving their time and energy. There was a huge community response."
But everything reminded Brad and Lauren of what happened, and so they had to get away. Lauren went to her parents' house outside of Boston while Brad went on a business trip to England. Lauren found herself sleeping all day, not eating, feeling sick. She thought it was because of the shooting.
"We had both spoken to counselors," Lauren said. "I spoke to my doctor on the phone. I said, 'We have to talk about a long-term plan, because I have four kids. I have to get out of bed in the morning.'"
Then she went grocery shopping and found herself buying applesauce. She thought to herself in the checkout line, "The last time I wanted applesauce, I had twins." She went back and bought a pregnancy test.
It was positive, in more ways than one.
"We were not planning another child," Brad said. "Four is plenty. Five is crazy. What the heck? It just sort of helped us move forward. The whole city's been able to move on because of the positivity of what this team has brought for us. We were lucky because we got a reason to move on right from the get-go."
