Around them, chaos swirled: sirens, footsteps, people yelling and trying to save the multiple victims of the Jan. 8 shooting outside a Safeway grocery store near Tucson. Susan Hileman, shot three times and bleeding, lay on the asphalt parking lot with eyes only for the young friend lying next to her.

"Don't you leave me, Christina-Taylor Green. Don't you die on me," Hileman told the little girl in her best do-as-I-say-or-you'll-be-in-trouble mom voice.

Christina-Taylor had been shot in the chest. The two lay side by side, looking into each other's eyes.

"Those eyes, those beautiful eyes," Hileman says.

Later, she would write in her blog, "I know that it is possible to watch the light go out of another person's eyes. I do not know if it is possible to live with that knowledge. I do know that I will try."

That day, Hileman did the most anyone can do to protect someone they love. She took three bullets, shielding Christina-Taylor's body with her own.

"And I couldn't bring her home," she says, her voice catching. "I'm so sorry that I couldn't bring her home."

Hileman sits on the end of her couch, a soft white blanket tucked around her legs, just two days out of the hospital. Her husband, Bill, sits next to her; a good friend, Audrey Varnum from Charlotte, N.C., is curled up in a chair nearby.

Hileman, 58, and herself a mother of two, is telling the story of the mass shooting that killed six and wounded 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But she also is weaving in happy memories and handling interruptions from the comings and goings of life.

The house is filling with flowers. The postal carrier says she is brokenhearted about what happened. And a box arrives from Zabar's in New York with rye bread and chocolate babka. Hileman is from the city, and Jewish. The delivery is comforting.

"I lost a friend. Christina and I hung out. I miss her," Hileman says. And she smiles, adding, "She cheats at pickup sticks."

Hileman remembers the first time they played.

Christina-Taylor would distract Hileman by pointing across the room and saying, "Look!" and then move game pieces while her opponent wasn't looking. She knew that Hileman knew exactly what she was doing.

"She was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead ...," Hileman starts the nursery rhyme and trails off, smiling. "We made each other giggle."

Desperate to be a grandmother but with no grandchildren yet, outings with Christina-Taylor and sometimes the girl's brother were common. Hileman took them to a behind-the-scenes tour at Reid Park Zoo. If there was a movie she wanted to see, Hileman would invite Christina-Taylor, saying: "If I buy the popcorn, will you keep me company?"

The answer was yes. Always yes.

So, yes, of course, Christina-Taylor wanted to go with Hileman to see a real-life U.S. congresswoman. Christina-Taylor had just been elected to her school student council.

Hileman pulled into the Greens' driveway at 9:45 a.m., dressed in jeans, a cardigan over a long-sleeve white shirt, and her favorite cowboy boots. Her attire never satisfied the more fashionable Christina-Taylor, who would have liked to see Hileman in something a bit more girly.

"Christina came out of the house, bouncing like 9-year-olds do," Hileman remembers. Her mother sent her back inside to get a sweat shirt.

While they waited, Hileman asked Roxanna Green: "Does she really want to do this with me? Is there something else she would rather be doing?" Her mother said, unequivocally: "Any place she goes with you, she's happy."

The plan was for lunch and a manicure after seeing Giffords. Hileman would have the girl back in three, four hours.

"And I couldn't bring her home," Hileman says again.

Driving to the Safeway, the two friends talked about what they might ask the congresswoman. "Do you have the keys?" Christina-Taylor asked when they had parked. That was her job. Hileman is notorious for leaving her keys in the car. Hileman dangled the keys. The two grinned at one another.

On the car seat, Christina left behind her sweat shirt, pink with a little peace sign.

* * *

Hileman says that when she was about Christina-Taylor's age, her grandfather told her that she would someday be president, though she believed it impossible because she was a girl, Jewish and poor.

The same would not be true for Christina-Taylor.

"She would know that there were possibilities in the world, and she could accessorize well while she did it, and be married to a studly astronaut," Hileman says. They were next in line. Hileman leaned down to Christina-Taylor and told her that she could be the next Gabrielle Giffords. And then, they heard the gunshots.

Hileman threw her arms around the little girl to shield her, and they ran. Hileman was shot in the right thigh, abdomen and chest. "I remember seeing a hole in my great skinny jeans that I bought with Audrey at Century 21" during a trip back to New York for their 40th high-school reunion, Hileman says. But "I don't remember it hurting."

And then, she and Christina-Taylor were on the ground, looking into each other's eyes.

A woman who seemed to come out of nowhere put pressure on Hileman's wounds and used her cellphone to call Christina-Taylor's parents and Bill Hileman. Someone else called out, "Who was with this girl? Who is this girl?"

Hileman answered, "She is my responsibility."

"And she was my friend," she says now, burying her face in a white teddy bear that her daughter's boyfriend gave her.

"Nine-year-olds don't carry identification. Nobody knew who she was," Hileman says, except her.

"And now the rest of the world."

* * *

Hileman knows that what happened to Christina was not her fault.

"It happened to us," Hileman says simply. "We were absolutely at the right place and" - she punches the palm of her left hand with her right fist - "and a bullet" - and she can't say anything else but holds up her hands, palms upward. "We should have been getting manicures."

As a retired social worker, Hileman has experience with people who suffer traumatic injuries. But there is no preparation for something like this, she says. There is no room for guilt or what ifs. "If, if, if gets you nowhere," she says.

Hileman has taken great care of her body. She goes to the gym regularly, lifts weights, takes yoga and Pilates and eats well.

Now, someone has shot it full of holes. And she is stuck here on the couch, taking pills for the pain and drinking protein shakes to help build bone.

The outpouring of support has been non-stop. A neighbor cleaned the house. A young man delivering groceries refuses a tip. The Hilemans may never have to cook again.

"People are taking real good care of me. I've never been on this receiving end," Hileman says, awed by the attention. "I'm just a regular person. I'm special to my friends and family. I'm just me. But Tucson loves me, and I love Tucson."

Actually, letters and e-mails are coming from across the country.

Hileman will use a wheelchair and a walker for at least four months, but her recovery is going well because she's so fit.

But getting back to normal is going to take some doing. She has started already, simply by being home. On Sunday, she will watch football with her husband and son, 27-year-old Billy. Her daughter, Jenny, 25, was just there.

There are things Hileman wants to do when she recovers, like encouraging physical fitness and intergenerational mentoring. "I have a voice now," she says. So, she will speak out. And she will continue to blog because it helps.

All that may fill the hours when she is missing her young friend.

"Something good has to come out of this," she says.

It seems something will.

Hileman's friend Amy Hernandez says her 5-year-old, Ryan, wants Hileman to take him to Dah Rock Shop to pick out some new rocks, and her 7-year-old, Evan, is itching to beat Hileman at chess - again.