AURORA — Just hours after getting shot at the Century 16 theater July 20, Zack Golditch’s focus wasn’t necessarily on what one might imagine.

The senior at Gateway High School, up all night after getting treated for a through-and-through bullet wound that left holes in his neck from the Midnight Massacre, fretted about missing a football workout with his teammates.

“That’s the kind of kid he is,” Gateway coach Justin Hoffman said. “He asked me if we were lifting (weights) in the morning. He didn’t want to miss.”

Only in retrospect did Golditch, 17, a 6-foot-5, 260-pound offensive tackle with a 3.8 grade-point average who has committed to Colorado State, attempt to come to grips with being in the middle of a mass shooting that resulted in 12 dead and 58 injured.

“At the time, I didn’t grasp it,” said Golditch, a native Coloradan. “It was hard to believe that something like that could happen in your own community, especially to you. … But not knowing what was going on helped me get through it.”

It began innocently enough. Golditch was seated among a small group of friends. Several others he knew were spread throughout crowded theaters 8 and 9. He was in theater 8.

“There was a scene where some gunfire was exchanged and then I hear a pop, pop, pop. … I looked to the right and I saw smoke and a guy who was bleeding,” Golditch said. “From what I could see, I just figured there were some people I don’t know who threw out firecrackers. I thought they were thrown right at him.”

A moment later, he said he turned back to look at the screen “and I hear a Bam! Behind my head. My ears were ringing and they hurt pretty bad. I wasn’t sure what happened, I thought maybe someone threw another (firework). And I leaned in on (friend) Jack Engelson on his lap. Then I kind of leaned to the other side.

“I put my hands over my ears and didn’t know what was happening. I felt blood hitting my hand. I could see it. So I jumped over a row. I was sitting in the first row of the second section. As I’m running out, I can see blood dropping into my hand.”

Everyone was yelling and running around, Golditch said, and he thought that someone was “throwing firecrackers and scaring people out of the theaters.”

He was unaware gunfire was coming from theater 9, and he ran outside. Despite bleeding profusely, he called 911.

He eventually ran directly into workers paving Sable Boulevard who came to his aide by getting him to lie down — Golditch said he thought he was going to pass out — and applying pressure with a towel. He said he “just wanted to run and get away.”

“How about this?” said his mom, Christine Golditch. “Earlier in the night, I passed those workers. I’m so glad they were there to help him.”

Police eventually transported Golditch, who still hadn’t identified his injury, to Aurora South Hospital. He said he was more concerned about so many others he saw covered in blood.

Construction workers told Golditch he was shot, but he remained confused.

“Shot? How?” he asked.

“Blessed” by bullet’s clean exit.

He believed when he saw others at the hospital, then his mother’s photographs of his neck. The bullet went in through the left side of his neck and under his ear, then exited the back in pieces. It only brushed against a nerve.

“I’m blessed,” he said. “I guess I wasn’t just grazed. It just went clean in and out, no shrapnel, just clean it out, no stitches because of the risk of infection. It’s just a really deep cut is how I took it.”

He turned on the television that morning but said he couldn’t watch for long. He was there, and that was enough. Plus, he had other questions. Should he have left his friends? How was he able to run? And a bullet from an adjoining theater traveled through a wall and went into his neck?

“Fortunately, I’m a pretty big guy,” Golditch said. “Did I save someone’s life because it hit me? … I’m taller, and I might have saved someone.

“I’m not complaining about it. I’m glad it kind of happened to me and not someone else.”

Christine Golditch said, thankfully, “it’s the way he was raised. He was taught right from wrong, and he did the right thing. I’m very proud of him, seeking out help. Think about this — when he came out, he said, ‘Mom, there was nobody there.’ That’s when a kid becomes an adult. Now, he had to find somebody to help him.”

The family hosted a barbecue for the pavers Saturday, and Golditch joined Olympian teammates for the opening of practice last week. He is having limited contact so far, and his helmet rubs against the front wound because the skin has yet to grow back. And he can’t throw around the weights as he had been, but knows he’s on the mend.

Routine never sounded so good.

He can’t wait for his first snap as a senior.

“Just going back to a normal routine, I’ll take that any day than being in a hospital,” he said.

Some time after the shootings, Golditch was out with his mother and stopped at a 7-Eleven for a snack. An 8-year-old boy and his father identified him from TV. They came over to him and shook hands. The boy called a blushing Golditch his “new superhero.”

While the younger Golditch, who has received encouraging messages from nearly all parts of the country, was polite and dismissed the notion, his mother couldn’t resist.

“I told Zack that he survived a tragic incident,” Christine said. “He survived. He didn’t let (the shooter) bring him down. He would not allow it. He had the courage to keep going, and he didn’t have to wear a cape to define the situation.

“I’m horrified that those people lost their daughter and the baby and others, and we can’t do anything about it. But I’m going to help my son get better and go out there with courage. We will not let evil take over our house. If we do, we lose and (the shooter) wins.”

Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714, ndevlin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/neildevlin