More than a year after waking to a bullet in her back, Brenda Hill says she's still asking the same questions — ones police may never be able to answer.

Hill suffered a gunshot wound during a driveby shooting at her west Edmonton home in December 2015.

A stray bullet splintered through a wall of her bedroom and then cut into her bed's mattress.

Neither stopped its trajectory.

Instead, the bullet pierced between the ribs under Hill's right arm, sliced through one lung, and lodged against her spine — two inches from her heart.

"Two more inches and I would have been dead," Hill said.

"It would have hit my heart and that would have been it."

Brenda Hill says that for weeks, she was too afraid to sleep in her own room after being hit by a stray bullet that pierced the wall of her home in December 2015. (Richard Marion/CBC)

Hill said she woke to the sound of a crack and the sensation of her hips being jerked down into the mattress.

"I thought my back broke," she said.

She tried to reach for her phone, but couldn't move her legs. So Hill turned to her boyfriend and whispered for him to get help.

"If he wasn't there, I don't think anybody would have heard me," said Hill, who lives with her mother and adult son.

"I started to bloat and then I could feel my nightgown getting tighter, and then I thought, 'That's it, I'm dying and I don't even know why.'"

By then, Hill's mother was in the room. Nobody knew what was wrong.

"I was having trouble breathing and I'm like, 'Mum, I think I'm going to die.' And then I just told her I loved her."

Paramedics arrived to discover a gunshot wound in her back. They rushed Hill to hospital, where she drifted in and out of consciousness.

"I had to have morphine probably every day for over a month because I just could not stand the pain."

She stayed in hospital for three months, returning home in March 2016 after surgeons removed the bullet from her back. Weeks of intensive physiotherapy helped Hill walk again.

Her right foot still drags across the floor with every step. She takes about 300 pills for nerve and muscle damage each month.

Case unsolved

Nobody knows who fired the shot that tore apart Hill's life.

Last week, Edmonton police confirmed they have concluded their investigation, but the case remains unsolved.

That same week, Hill returned to her retail job. She's restricted to four-hour shifts and can no longer work the physically strenuous position that paid $22 an hour before the shooting.

Instead, Hill said, she's on three-month probation for a casual sales position with a $15 hourly wage.

"It's wrecked my life," she said. "I can't even take care of my son properly anymore."

Hill is the only source of income for her aging mother and disabled adult son, she added.

"We all just pitch in to keep everything going," she said. "But it's not fun. I used to have a good job, I made money, I could take my son places and do things. But now it's mostly just staying in the house because you really can't afford to do anything. Just bills, groceries, mortgage and you're done."

Brenda Hill says her aging mother and disabled adult son both rely on her as the household's only source of income. (Richard Marion/CBC)

Long-term disability payments won't be enough to cover the mortgage on her home, Hill said. She worries about losing the house that's supposed to give financial security to her son, David, so he doesn't have to live in a group home if anything happens to Hill.

"I worked hard to get this house," Hill said. "It's the only thing I have, right? And I don't want to see it gone because of this, because of someone's stupid mistake."

If police identify and arrest the person who shot towards her home more than a year ago, Hill said she would want to press charges. More than that, she said she wants answers.

"All I want to know is why," Hill said.

"But I have to put it behind me. I have to look to the future. I gotta think positive and just keep going. You can't let it eat away at you. It'll ruin your whole life."

@ZoeHTodd