"I just have the scars"

The pea-sized white circle on Patrick Korellis' left arm is barely visible.

It could be a birthmark, a souvenir of a childhood accident, the remnant of a minor surgery.

But the bump on Korellis' forearm conceals one of the shotgun pellets a gunman sprayed into a Cole Hall classroom on Feb. 14, 2008.

Korellis was enrolled in the Geology 104 class to round out his double major in meteorology and geography.

In Cole Hall Room 101, the 22-year-old college senior usually sat in the same row as Gayle Dubowski and Korellis' close friend, Monika Thorpe.

Dubowski was one of the five students who died in the attack. And Thorpe had recently transferred out of the class to pursue an internship.

Korellis got hit as he ran for the door.

"I felt the pain immediately. I touched the back of my head, and there was blood all over my hands. I hadn't thought that there was an actual bullet lodged in my head."

A second shotgun pellet is lodged in Korellis' skin under the hair on the back of his head.

Korellis doesn't notice the pellets - except for occasional pain in the back of his head.

The pellets, though, and the small scars that cover them, serve as a constant reminder of the most horrific day of Korellis' life.

"I have metal in my body that's not supposed to be in there."

The pellets, doctors have told him, are slowly winding their way toward the surface of Korellis' skin. One day, they might get close enough for doctors to remove.

"As of now, I just have the scars."

Korellis comes from a religious Greek Orthodox household. His father was born in Greece. His mother was raised in Chicago's Greek-American community. Both parents speak their mother tongue fluently.

"From a young age, he went to church every Sunday, and he was very comfortable speaking to the priest," Patrick's mother, Eva Korellis said. "He prays every day."

On the Web site of NIU's chapter of the American Meteorological Society, Korellis wrote, "I believe I am going to be the first Greek meteorologist!"

Korellis enrolled in Northern Illinois University because the school has a strong meteorology department and his brother was already a student there.

After Korellis arrived at DeKalb's Kishwaukee Community Hospital, the hospital staff called his mother.

"I was in shock. My blood drained from my body. I thought I was going to pass out," Eva Korellis said. She immediately set out for DeKalb.

"I was shaking, and I drove by myself," Eva Korellis said. "I don't even know how I got there. I was in a daze. It took me 21/2 hours to get there."

"When I got there, it was like a madhouse. I saw a helicopter taking other students away. I saw news media going into the hospital."

"When I saw that he was OK, I burst into tears and hugged him."

But other students were not OK, and Eva Korellis watched as other parents became hysterical when doctors at Kishwaukee told them their children were dead or seriously hurt.

"I just started crying," she said. "I still think about those parents that this happened to."

While Korellis was recovering from his injuries at the hospital, a priest from St. George Greek Orthodox Church of DeKalb visited him and said a prayer at his bedside.

A quiet, mild-mannered man, Korellis doesn't talk about Feb. 14 much with his family or his friends.

"If I don't talk to him or ask him how he's doing - he doesn't really open up much," Eva Korellis said. But Eva said her son initially had nightmares after the shooting and felt guilty he survived, while five of his classmates did not.

"I think he just thinks about the kids who died more than himself," Eva Korellis said. "I told him all you have to do is just pray and keep strong and light a candle."

Although he was injured, Korellis was spared the worst. His parents said someone had been watching over him.

"I felt the same way," Korellis said. "Someone in my row had died. Something had told me to run out. If I hadn't run out, he would have shot me."

By now, Korellis is used to questions about what happened on Feb. 14, 2008.

In the weeks and months after the shooting, he told and retold the story to dozens of friends and extended family. Retelling the story has made it easier.

"Talking about it 20 to 30 times a day for a week, you kind of get used to it," Korellis said.

When a gunman started shooting up his Cole Hall classroom, Korellis' first thought was to get out as soon as possible.

"I didn't want to look back," he said. "I didn't want to get hit."

It was too late. Korellis got hit at his seat. He got up and ran for the door. He got hit again.

Outside Cole Hall, it was like any other Thursday afternoon in DeKalb.

"There were just students walking like normal," Korellis said. "No one knew what was going on."

Because so many students were injured, Korellis had to wait a few minutes before he could get into an ambulance. He didn't know if the horror he had just witnessed was still going on. Then he heard on a police radio: the shooter had taken his own life.

"It was a relief that he wasn't able to do any more damage to anyone else," Korellis said.

Korellis' longtime friend Christine Korkowski was supposed to leave for campus to make up a final exam when she heard about the shooting.

Korellis was the only friend she wasn't able to reach, until another friend called her and told her Korellis had been shot.

"I just broke down. I don't know, I was going crazy. You just don't expect that to happen to a friend," Korkowski said. "I was kind of delirious."

Thorpe was sitting nearby in Davis Hall when her then-fiance called her to tell her there was a shooting at Cole Hall.

"The first thing I thought of was, 'What if it's my classroom, and what if it's Patrick?'" Thorpe said.

Thorpe started running to her fiance's car more than a mile away.

"As I was running, I was calling Patrick. Patrick wasn't picking up," Thorpe said. "That was the longest run of my life."

Thorpe and her fiance drove straight home, where she found out on the social networking Web site Facebook that Korellis had been shot.

She wasn't able to talk to her friend until midnight - when Korellis returned her call from his hospital bed.

"I broke down," Thorpe said. "I just told him how glad I was he's OK. I told him I was sorry."

Thorpe and Korellis met in calculus freshman year and signed up for many of the same classes the rest of their college career. They sat next to each other every Geology 104 class, until Thorpe transferred out to accept an internship.

"I'm glad I took that internship - but there's a lot of guilt that I wasn't there with him, and I was the one that pushed him to take that class," Thorpe said.

Korellis stayed overnight at Kishwaukee Community Hospital. Doctors wanted to make sure he could sleep OK, that there wasn't any neurological damage.

The wounds from the shotgun pellets were so small, Korellis didn't need stitches.

Like some of his classmates in the months after the shooting, Korellis' mind would return to Cole Hall when he heard loud noises. July 4 was difficult.

"I was in the car and heard a really big bang outside, and it just startled me and got me thinking about what happened," Korellis said.

He didn't return to campus until classes resumed Feb. 25. It wasn't easy.

"I couldn't really concentrate," Korellis said. "Going by Cole Hall, just seeing the door I ran out of - the first day was the hardest."

The Geology 104 class continued to meet in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center, a short distance from Cole. The first day of class after the shootings was emotional - especially for instructor Joe Peterson, who had been shot in the shoulder.

"He basically told us what happened to him, and he heard some of our stories and got pretty teary eyed," Korellis said.

Thorpe was there, too. It was the only time she went back to the Geology 104 class after Feb. 14.

"It was a very somber, sad class," Thorpe said. "It helped me understand what everybody else was going through."

It helped Korellis, too.

"It helped talking to somebody that was in it and knew how he felt," Eva Korellis said. "That, he told me, helped more than anything."

As Korellis approached graduation, he grew closer to his Geology 104 classmates - especially the other students who had been injured.

"We all knew together what we went through and how everything has been for us emotionally and physically," Korellis said. "Sharing our stories has helped the most."

In the spring, Korellis walked across the stage at NIU's Convocation Center to accept his degree.

"It was nice to be finished," he said. "I was happy that I was able to get back."

Becky Lewis, who was Korellis' liaison to the university and helped him navigate academic issues and retrieve his belongings after Feb. 14, said school was his top priority.

"His biggest concerns were about his classes and continuing his education," said Lewis, NIU's assistant director for fitness and wellness. "Academics were his number-one concern."

Korellis now lives with his parents in Lake Villa and plans to pursue a career in meteorology or geography.

Korellis said he's used to loud noises now. The violent video games that brought back memories of Cole Hall in the weeks after Feb. 14 don't bother him anymore. He even plays them.

For the most part, Korellis says he's left Feb. 14 in the past.

"It took a couple of months to recover from it, but I've gotten back to my normal habits," Korellis said.

Korellis' family and friends said he shows few external signs of the trauma he endured but that Feb. 14 strengthened his character and changed the way he views the world.

"I think it's made him a stronger person, and I think it will help him throughout his life," Eva Korellis said. "He told me that he thinks about life a little bit differently. He looks at a lot of things as being important to him instead of taking things for granted."

Korellis' friends said he drew on his personal strength and the support of his friends and family to put the ghosts of Feb. 14 behind him.

"For someone to go through that, I think he's doing really, really good," Korkowski said. "That's something that no one can ever forget. It's going to be part of his life forever."