'The guilt of being alive is heavy'

"Where's Tiara?"

Patience Carter and her friend Akyra Murray were just outside Pulse, backing away from the sound of gunfire, when they realized that their third friend, Tiara Parker, was still inside. "Where's Tiara?" Ms. Carter asked again.

The two young women went back into the nightclub to look for her. Within moments, all three would find themselves trapped in a bathroom stall full of other terrified people as the gunman approached. He fired into the stalls with an automatic rifle. Ms. Carter and Ms. Parker, both 20, were wounded. Ms. Murray, only 18, was killed.

On Tuesday, Ms. Carter described the crushing remorse she felt for having brought Ms. Murray back inside with her. If only she had told her friend to wait outside, Ms. Carter said. "Her mom told me not to feel guilty, God has his plan." But the burden is immense. "The guilt of being alive is heavy," Ms. Carter told reporters.

More stories of survival emerged Tuesday from among the dozens of people wounded in the massacre at Pulse that left at least 49 victims dead. Their accounts describe how an evening of dancing and drinking turned into a scene of unimaginable horror, where the difference between life and death was a matter of centimetres or seconds.

At a briefing on Monday, doctors at Orlando Regional Medical Center – just blocks from Pulse – said 44 victims were brought to the hospital after the shooting. Nine died shortly after they arrived. Of the 35 who survived, 27 remain in hospital. Six of them are in the intensive-care unit and a senior surgeon said one or two are "profoundly ill."

Angel Colon, 26, was among those being treated at the hospital. When the gunfire began, he was in the middle of saying his goodbyes to his friends. Shot three times in his leg, he fell to the ground. As people tried to escape, they trampled on him, breaking his leg. The gunman, Omar Mateen, went into another room, then returned and began shooting people already on the floor to make sure he had killed them, Mr. Colon said. The shots drew closer.

"I'm thinking, 'I'm next, I'm dead,'" he said at a press conference on Tuesday. The gunman shot a woman next to him. Then he fired at Mr. Colon twice – but "by the grace of God" the bullets hit his hand and hip. "I had no reaction," Mr. Colon said, "so he doesn't know that I'm alive."

For long minutes, he heard the gunman exchange fire with police. Then, when Mr. Colon looked up, he saw an officer in front of him – a man to whom he said he will be grateful for the rest of his life. The officer took his hand and dragged him out of the club, over shattered glass, to safety and an ambulance outside.

Angel Santiago and a friend took refuge in a bathroom stall for the disabled. Mr. Santiago curled himself under the sink, trying to find some kind of protection. The gunshots drew nearer and nearer, so close that he could actually smell them, an odour like firecrackers. Bullets pierced the stall wall, hitting Mr. Santiago in the left foot and right knee.

He heard the gunman enter another bathroom, followed by a volley of shots and screaming. Everyone around him tried to be as quiet as possible, despite their injuries, hoping that their silence would prevent the shooter from returning. Eventually, Mr. Santiago decided to pull himself out of the stall using only his arms, since he was unable to walk. He made it to the bar area, where police officers told him to drop whatever he had in his hands – his cellphone – and drag himself toward them.

In another bathroom, Ms. Carter and her friends were in the middle of a living nightmare. Ms. Murray had recently graduated from high school in Philadelphia. To celebrate, her parents took the three young women on a trip to Florida. They pleaded with Ms. Murray's parents to let them all go out dancing on Saturday night.

Now Ms. Carter was shot twice in the legs, with one bullet shattering her right femur. From the floor of the stall, she could see bodies slumped over the adjoining toilets, which were marked by bloody hand prints. People called 911, begging for help; her friend Ms. Murray called her mother.

"If this is my time, if this is how I have to go, just please take me," Ms. Carter remembered thinking. "I was begging for God to take the soul out of my body. I didn't want to feel any more pain, I didn't want to get any more shots."

The gunman returned to the bathroom after the first round of carnage. Ms. Carter listened as he spoke with emergency dispatchers over the phone, saying that the reason he was doing this was because he wanted the United States to "stop bombing his country." (Mr. Mateen was born in New York and his parents are immigrants from Afghanistan.) She said she heard him speaking to someone in a foreign language, possibly Arabic. At one point, he asked if there were any African-Americans in the bathroom. "He said, 'I don't have a problem with black people,'" Ms. Carter recalled.

As police closed in, preparing to blow open a wall of the bathroom, there was another moment of terror. Mr. Mateen said, "Hey you," addressing someone Ms. Carter couldn't see, and fired three final shots. One of them hit the person right next to her, who effectively shielded her, saving her life.

She looked over. Her friend Ms. Parker was shot in the side. Ms. Murray was draped over Ms. Parker's lap, unmoving. Another man checked Ms. Murray's pulse and said she was still breathing. As a police officer picked her up to drag her outside, Ms. Carter noticed Ms. Murray's phone on the ground and picked it up, thinking she would give it back to her. She never saw her friend alive again.

A timeline of the shooting

1. About 2 a.m. Omar Mateen enters the nightclub.
2. He opens fire on the main dance floor.
   
3. 2:03-2:05 a.m. He opens fire on the main dance floor.
   
4. A second gun battle ensues with additional officers.
   
5. After 2:06 a.m. The gunman flees into a bathroom, taking hostages. He calls 911 and pledges allegiance to the Islamic State. Hostage negotiators begin talks with the shooter.
   
6. About 5 a.m. Police detonate an explosive on an exterior wall and use an armoured vehicle to punch a half-metre-by-one-metre hole in the wall. Mr. Mateen runs out and is killed in shootout with SWAT team members.