Ashley Barnes was busy sending students at RJ Wollam Elementary School in Santa Fe home early Friday after reports of a shooting at the school district’s high school. That’s when a Santa Fe ISD police officer arrived and said, “You need to come with me.”

The 41-year-old assistant principal tried to stay calm. She’d heard rumors that an officer had been shot but that it wasn’t her husband, John Barnes, who’d been working for the district as a school police officer for just four months after a long and distinguished career with the Houston Police Department.

She’d even assured her son that his dad was fine. But the officer’s sudden visit changed everything.

“I was freaking out,” she said. “As soon as she got me, I knew it was John. I just needed her to tell me he wasn’t dead.”

As it happened, Barnes had rushed into Santa Fe High School with other officers after a gunman started shooting students in two art rooms in the back of the campus.

Inside, the officers had confronted 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the student accused of shooting and killing eight students and two teachers.

It was a relief — if ever so slight — to be told that he had been shot in the elbow. Who dies of a gunshot wound to the arm?

But when she arrived at University of Texas Medical Branch, she learned Barnes had coded — that his heart had stopped twice.

Pagourtzis fired his Remington shotgun at Barnes. The blast hit his right elbow, shredding veins and bone and sending blood spraying out onto the ground.

“His elbow is completely messed up,” Barnes said.

A fellow officer pulled him out of harm’s way and applied a tourniquet to try to stanch the bleeding. Paramedics arrived soon after and rushed Barnes to UTMB. He flatlined on the way to the hospital, and again in surgery, where doctors rushed to restart his heart, stop the bleeding and reconnect blood vessels.

They sedated Barnes to make it easier for him to rest and recover. But some of Barnes’ friends worried he might lose his arm.

In the midst of that panic, Ashley Barnes called to have their two kids — a 10-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy — picked up and brought to the hospital.

After seven hours in surgery, Barnes was moved to the ICU. On Saturday, Ashley said he was still sedated but on the mend.

It was one of the few bits of good news in a tragedy that has devastated the small town of Santa Fe.

As he was undergoing surgery, many praised Barnes for confronting the shooter.

Ashley Barnes said she appreciates the recognition her husband has received, but his actions Friday weren’t any different from his previous years in law enforcement.

“John is not a hero from Friday,” she said. “John has been a hero every day he put on a police uniform.”

He loves kids and he loves watching out for them, she said. It was why he’d devoted a decade investigating sex crimes against children. Working for a school police department had been a natural choice after his career at HPD.

Since coming out of surgery, he has shaken his head yes or no when doctors and family members asked him questions. He lifted his arm and wiggled some fingers. Doctors found a pulse in his hand.

He will remain sedated for a few more days to allow the swelling to subside, his wife said. Then, orthopedic surgeons will attempt to rebuild his elbow.

“It was in very bad shape,” she said. “They’re going to have multiple surgeries, and they hope he’ll have full range of motion by the end, but they can’t promise that.”

He faces months of recovery and rehab. And he will have to learn the extent of what took place inside Santa Fe High School.

“He is going to be really upset that they lost those kids and the teachers,” she said. “It’s going to hurt him.”

st.john.smith@chron.com