Taylor recalls: “I saw him in the waiting room when he pulled the gun. I thought, ‘Oh no, he’s going to kill himself’, then he shot me in the right hip and left knee (mirroring Vukovic’s own injuries). He then said, ‘Now you know how I feel’.” The wounded doctor crawled to a counter to try and find protection but the gunman cornered him: “He moved like Usain Bolt – not bad for a man with a permanent disability.” The gunman shot him a further three times – leaving him with wounds in the legs, shoulder, chest, lower stomach and backside. One bullet travelled through his chest, missing his heart by a millimetre. “He used solid target ammunition that went through me and that probably saved my life. It didn’t shatter through the body.” Taylor, a father of three, looked up and said: “Zuber, you’ve killed me. Can I please phone my family and say goodbye? “I was trying to buy just one minute. I wanted to humanise me to him,” he recalled this week, 22 years after the unprovoked attack.

Instead of giving his victim his last phone call, the gunman lay down beside Taylor and shot himself in the chest. An Age report on the shooting of Andrew Taylor from April 1999. Credit:Age Archive And this is where it goes from inexplicable to downright weird. When the ambulance officers arrived they decided Vukovic was in more danger than Taylor, making the call that the gunman would be given priority and taken by medical helicopter to The Alfred Hospital's specialist trauma centre. His victim would be taken by road to the local Frankston Hospital. That is until one of the police present stepped forward with a second medical opinion that he delivered quite forcefully: “This is bullshit, he’s going in the chopper." So room was made for both to fly to The Alfred on the one flight. Sometimes too much knowledge is counterproductive. As he was loaded in, Taylor looked up and counted the tubes going into his body – there were seven. “When you have four you are in serious trouble,” he says.

He blacked out when he reached the hospital heliport and didn’t wake for a week. He underwent emergency surgery on his 40th birthday. Years earlier Taylor had conducted a review of the NSW ambulance service, concluding that state-of-the-art trauma centres were not a great priority because shootings were a rarity and helicopter ambulances did not make enough difference to justify the costs. When he arrived at The Alfred he was given 17 units of blood in 40 minutes using a machine not available at most casualty centres. If he had been taken to the Frankston Hospital in a road ambulance he would not have survived. It is fair to say Taylor no longer agrees with his NSW conclusion. When he recovered, he worked some shifts at The Alfred trauma centre "to see what it was like on the other side". Taylor was slugged $3500 for the helicopter flight while Vukovic flew for free. The offender was charged with attempted murder but allowed to plead guilty to intentionally causing serious injury and sentenced to a minimum of four years.

Two decades on we are still facing this massive hole in the criminal code. Shoot someone repeatedly and if they die it is murder; if they live it is nearly impossible to prove attempted murder. So isn’t it time to change the law? For all Taylor’s pain and suffering, agonising rehabilitation, loss of income, nightmares and fears that the offender might come back, he received the same compensation as the patients and receptionist who witnessed the attack. Dr Andrew Taylor: Too stubborn to die. He shows no obvious hostility to the offender and no apparent mental scars from the attack. “Getting shot doesn’t hurt at all,” he observes. Asked why he is so matter-of-fact, he replies: “Because I lived.”

The only time his eyes glisten with emotion is when he mentions his niece Emily, then seven years old and battling a brain tumour. Weeks earlier her parents, the wonderfully generous Peter and Jenny Schwab (Taylor’s sister), had been told there was no hope. Taylor organised for her to come home for those last few weeks and had already told his practice he would only work mornings, as he wanted to care for Emily every afternoon. On the day of the shooting he had planned to go to the Schwabs' for their son William’s pirate-themed birthday party. Emily was there enjoying the party and watching 101 Dalmatians on television. Taylor’s parents were at a wedding when they received the news that their son had been shot. “My father said his happiest moment was sitting with homicide detectives at the hospital when they told him it wasn’t going to be their job.” Emily felt sad her cousins and uncle had missed out on seeing Humphrey B. Bear at the party and so Humphrey turned up at The Alfred to see the still seriously ill doctor. Other patients in intensive care must have thought their medication had been doubled seeing a giant bear standing next to a heavily sedated shooting victim. Andrew Taylor is visited in hospital by his sister Jenny (in surgical gown), terminally ill niece Emily and Humphrey B. Bear.

Emily passed away the following month, while Taylor was still in hospital. ‘‘Sometimes there is just no reason,’’ he says. Taylor could have decided to take a risk-free job, well way from stress. Instead he works in a Frankston clinic which cares for the drug affected and mentally ill. The day we visit he opens the solid sliding door that separates patients from medical staff, speaks gently to an elderly and clearly sick woman to make sure she has some food, then walks purposefully to the busy cafe just up the road. Outside is a man wearing a ship's captain’s cap sitting at a bus stop, a pencil-thin man pacing back and forth yelling into a mobile phone and a woman who, if spitting was an Olympic event, would finish on the podium. Ordering a coffee, he hands the pregnant young server a large box of free sample maternity vitamins so she doesn’t have to pay over the counter and cheerfully answers a medical question from a lunchtime patron. Taylor has a wound on his head from a sailing mishap a few days earlier. Clearly being shot hasn’t slowed him down.

As a shooting survivor and a medical practitioner at the sharp end, his views on crime and addiction deserve to be heard. Dr Andrew Taylor. “One in three of our patients with drug issues have done jail time and because they can’t get a job they commit more crime. We have 1000 heroin addicts at the clinic and we know opiate substitutes work.” These addicts can be managed, he says, and are not a threat to the community. “It is methamphetamines that is driving this craziness. They would be better off in jail, where their violence can be managed and they can detox.” He suggests drug addicts who commit minor offences should be put in a secure facility for six weeks to break the cycle without a criminal conviction and if they continue to offend they should be jailed.

Taylor is worried at the growth of illegal firearms in the area. One patient came in and remarked that he had been raided that morning by police looking for firearms. “He said he had the laser dot on his chest (police aiming a gun at him) and seemed perfectly relaxed about it. I would be a shaking wreck.” Another patient taught himself to make machine guns from scratch. “He never said who bought them.” He says some of these addicts are the victims of big pharmacy companies. “Pain specialists were using the same six products for chronic conditions as for short-term intense pain. You take opiates for a year and your tolerance grows and you become addicted. “You have to manage it and learn to live as normally as possible with the pain,” he says. Having been shot five times, he probably knows a bit about that subject.

For those who have lost a son, daughter or sibling, The Compassionate Friends Victoria has a 24-hour grief support line on 9888 4944 or 1300 9064 068.