One of the victims wounded in last Friday’s mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater was set to attend the University of Maryland as a graduate music student this fall. But after a gunman opened fire inside a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 and wounding 58 others, Petra Anderson is, rather than preparing to move to College Park, recovering from her wounds in an intensive care unit.

Anderson, 22, was hit four times by shotgun pellets, including one shot that entered her nose and traveled up the back of her cranium. She survived thanks to a birth defect, a small channel of fluid flowing through her skull. Some, like her pastor, Brad Strait, are calling this a “miracle.”

In a post on his blog, Strait recounted Anderson’s ordeal so far, writing that Anderson, while regaining consciousness, still faces several more surgeries before getting back to her life. Strait writes:

While we’re talking, Petra awakes. She opens her eyes, and sits up, “Mom.” Movie-star doctor spins to grab her, to protect her from falling. The nurse assures him she’s been doing this for a while. He talks to her, and she talks back. He asks questions, and Petra has the right answers. “Where do you hurt, Petra?” “All over.” Amazed, but professional, he smiles and leaves the set shaking his head. I am so thankful for this man.

Petra is groggy and beat up, but she is herself. Honestly, I look worse before my morning coffee. “I’m thirsty,” she proclaims.

Anderson’s classmates from her undergraduate studies described her to WJLA as a skilled violinist and composer who trained at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. before selecting Maryland.

“She’s a hard core composer, that’s what she loves to do,” said Brianne Nemiroff, a classmate.

But Anderson’s wounds are not the only medical hurdle her family his facing. Her mother, Kim, is fighting a relapse of the breast cancer she thought she had overcome in early 2011. Faced with the twin financial burdens of recovering from a gunshot and cancer treatment, the Anderson family has launched a fundraising page on the website IndieGoGo.com. Petra Anderson’s sister, Chloe, narrates the video associated with the fundraising campaign.

“The villain,” Chloe Anderson says, referring to alleged gunman James Holmes, “may have intended this as his story. “He may have stepped into our world, but we’re watching heroes up here everywhere we look, from the policemen and the doctors to the hospital workers and volunteers.”