FORT HOOD, Texas -- The first witness on the first day of testimony, and there it was: The emotional wallop of hearing a survivor of the Fort Hood massacre describe her husband’s last moments of life.

But finding out those painful details was what drove Joleen Cahill to make her way through the security and the metal detectors to enter the courthouse where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was facing an Article 32 hearing.

She wanted to know exactly what happened that November day last year when the Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire inside a base medical building, killing her husband of 37 years, Michael Cahill, along with 12 others, and wounding 32 more.

When the soldier on the stand testifying Wednesday brought up “Dr. Cahill” -– the honorary nickname patients had for her physician’s-assistant husband –- Cahill braced herself against the back of her chair, briefly closed her eyes and “listened very, very carefully.”

Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford was describing the scene when the shooting first started and Hasan was taking aim at soldiers sitting in a waiting area, in line to see the medical providers. Lunsford said he was crouched behind a counter when he saw Michael Cahill rush from his cubicle, grab a chair and raise it by the legs above his head, apparently getting ready to throw it at the shooter.

“Major Hasan at that time turns his weapon on Dr. Cahill, discharges his weapon and he shoots Dr. Cahill,” Lunsford testified, noting that Cahill then fell dead among the soldiers scrambling for cover.

“That was difficult to hear,” Joleen Cahill said. “Just really emotional.”

Despite an opening day of testimony that left her sleepless that night, the 61-year-old Cahill will keep returning to the court for what is expected to be a nearly month-long hearing. She’s unable to be there every day, but she said she’ll use all her vacation and take days without pay from her job as a legal secretary so she can witness as much of the hearing as possible. Should the investigating officer decide there is enough evidence for a court martial, she’ll be a fixture for that, too.

“I will keep going to the court to let (Hasan) know that our family cares about what happens and that we are a part of this,” she said.

Cahill wants her presence to send a message to Hasan -- that he has been neutered of any threat.

The day of the shootings, “he had the power. He had the control. He had the weapon,” she said. “He does not have the power and the control anymore. I am the one with the power. JAG is the one with the power.”

That knowledge has brought her some comfort. But there are missing pieces from Nov. 5 that she wants to fill in. Cahill has immersed herself in the story of that day, struggling to recreate the scene, moment by moment.

“My entire family would really like to know everything we could know,” she said, including their three adult children. “I think we want to understand it more.”

She befriended the major who was in her husband’s office when the shooting started that day. Later, he flew an American flag in Michael Cahill’s honor when he deployed to Afghanistan.

She has also bonded with family members of the fallen over the last 11 months. On Memorial Day weekend, they gathered to add flags and ribbons to the fence that the Army put up around the building after the shooting to preserve what is still an active crime scene.

Joleen put up a wreath with red poinsettias and blue stars for her husband.

She says she hasn’t gotten used to coming home to an empty house -– the one they built together seven years ago in Cameron, Texas, with a front porch just like Mike wanted. Sometimes, at night, she talks out loud to him.

“OK, Mike, what am I supposed to do?” she asks him when she’s feeling overwhelmed.

Michael, a 62-year-old retired chief warrant officer, was known for his knack for putting patients at ease when he did medical screenings at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where soldiers go before deploying.

Learning in court that her husband had charged out and attempted to stop the shooter with a chair didn’t come as a surprise. A shooting in Bethel, Alaska, in 1997, where Joleen Cahill’s niece went to school and her sister-in-law worked, prompted the family to talk about what you should do in that scenario. Joleen Cahill remembers her husband saying, “You start throwing things. You try to take him down.”

“And so when we found out that’s what he did, it made sense,” she said.

If he had just hidden under the desk, kept out view, he would probably still be alive, she thinks. The possibility that his actions helped some other soldiers live is the one saving grace for her.

“My husband had lived a very good, long life,” she said. “He had many years left to give to his patients, and to his family and to me, but there were a lot of young people there that day, and if he gave them those few extra seconds to save their lives, then that means a great deal to me. I can get through my anger on that part of it.”

Cahill is dedicating time to the hearing in part to support those surviving soldiers as they testify. She wants to know where they stood, what they saw and how they escaped.

On the first day that the prosecution began calling witnesses last week, she didn’t sit in the courtroom. Instead, she watched from a private, closed-circuit viewing room with her son James and a counselor from the base’s Survivor Outreach Services. They were alone in the room; not very many people showed up for the hearing. She was afraid of how she would react to the testimony and “a courtroom has certain rules you have to abide by, proper etiquette,” she said. Not knowing which emotions would sneak up on her, she decided to keep a little distance.

Cahill, a thin woman who often hugs herself, took studious notes on a small steno pad as witnesses took the stand. Lunsford testified first and related how he had been shot five times, including once in the head. Then came the replay of a wrenching 911 call. By lunch, Cahill needed to lie down. She spent the break on the couch at Survivor Outreach Services.

Cahill said her anger grew as she heard victim after victim talk about how Hasan had made eye contact before training his laser on them and gunning them down. Pfc. George Stratton’s testimony about how Hasan had “a piercing gaze in his eyes” stuck with her.

“It gave me chills up my back,” she said.

Tears came to her eyes when the 6-foot, 9 1/2-inch Lunsford stood up and pointed at Hasan, telling the court that the man paralyzed from the waist down and now confined to a wheelchair was the shooter. It was a poignant moment, she said: That a survivor healed of his wounds could turn his own steely gaze on the now-broken man who had ruthlessly gunned him down and identify him as guilty.

On Thursday, Cahill decided she could handle being in the actual courtroom, only 20 or so feet from Hasan. She sat most of the time with her chin pressed into the palm of her hand and her fingers in a loose fist over her mouth.

This day, too, her husband’s name came up. 1st Lt. Brandy Mason testified about how she had been playing a game on her cell phone when she heard someone yell “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is Great” in Arabic. She said she looked over and saw a major in fatigues with a hospital ID badge.

“His name tape said H-A-S-A-N,” Mason testified. Hasan pointed his weapon at her head and then shot her in the hip, yet part of her still couldn’t believe the scene was real. Even after the military police showed up, Mason said, she still thought it must have been a training simulation.

Then, she testified, “I saw Doc Cahill and all the blood and I realized all this was real.”

The counselor sitting next to Joleen Cahill looked over and asked if she was all right. Cahill, with her hand over her mouth, nodded.

Cahill stayed focused on the witnesses and only occasionally glanced at Hasan. She had already satisfied the desire to take a good hard look at him. Last month, she skipped a few hours of work to go to a procedural hearing and see the man in the flesh. Cahill said she was anxious about the encounter, but when the frail-looking Hasan was wheeled into the courtroom, she felt relieved.

“In the photos, he looked like a solemn, proud person,” she said. But in court, “there was a change in his face. It was different. It showed the wear and tear of the repercussions of what he had done.”

Cahill’s children aren’t sure how they want Hasan punished if he’s found guilty at trial, but Cahill has made up her mind.

“I do not want the death penalty,” she said. “I want him to live with what he’s done. Just like our wounds are something we have to live with the rest of our lives.”

mccloskeym@stripes.osd.mil

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