Will felt like he was being followed. He kept looking over his shoulder, thinking someone was in the bushes or hiding behind a eucalyptus tree. A full, near-Halloween moon illuminated the Balboa Park canyon. Shadows crept over the trail. The post-midnight breeze was not cold, but it did carry autumn’s telltale edge of spectral knowledge — that air of inevitability, yawning smugly from the Other Side.

Will quickened his pace.

Maybe his coworker was right when she’d said it was a bad idea to walk through the park alone after they’d smoked cigarettes and chatted on the Robinson Street Bridge, the late-night traffic of State Route 163 rushing beneath them.

Maybe it was an omen, Will thought, an instinctual kind of thing. Or maybe the drinks he’d had after clocking out of work at a Bankers Hill cantina were playing tricks with his mind.

Will got out his phone and called his cousin. Sure, he’d walked the secluded path from his part-time job at Barrio Star to the Hillcrest home he shared with his father several times, but tonight was different. The conversation would calm his nerves.

Preoccupied with the phone call, Will Barton — a 20-year-old Point Loma High School graduate who spent his free time skateboarding, painting, hanging out at the beach, cycling, chasing girls, and taking art classes at City College — didn’t notice a thing when, at 2:34 in the morning on October 29, 2012, a stranger jumped out of a car at the crossroads of Richmond and Upas and shot him point-blank in the throat, shoulder, and back of the head.

Will thought he was dead. Looking back on it, he vaguely remembers lying down on the sidewalk. It was like that part in The Big Lebowski when the Dude goes to Jackie Treehorn’s place and they’re throwing the chick into the air, and she’s topless on this giant blanket, except every time he hits the blanket, he falls through to the Other Side and lands on another blanket — up, down, here, gone — until finally he bounces all the way up and he’s coming out of a coma in the intensive-care unit, surrounded by family and friends, oblivious to the fact that he’s overcome 99-to-1 odds of death.

“I was super-frustrated because I wanted to hang out and talk with everybody, but I could only mouth words,” Will says four and a half months later, as he recovers in a wheelchair at his grandparents’ house in Rancho San Diego.

He is tended to by his father, Will Barton, Sr, and mother, Marie Lonsdale (née Najera), both self-employed artists who’ve been fighting with hospitals and Marie’s insurance company to get proper treatment for their son.

As of my visit on March 7, Will’s been out of rehab for almost a week. He’s regained use of his voice, limited use of some limbs, and is demonstrating remarkable cognitive improvements after spending time at Scripps Mercy and Vibra hospitals (both in Hillcrest); Scripps Encinitas; and with brain-injury specialists Learning Services, in Escondido.

Shortly after he came to, Will learned of the killing spree carried out by Philip Martin Hernandez, a 40-year-old former Cal Fire firefighter, and his 18-year-old wife, Cindy Altamirano Garcia.

The couple, whose manipulative relationship reportedly began at a National City park when Garcia was 16, had been watching him as he walked home through the park that October night.

The official version of the story has it that Hernandez mistook Will for the police officer who had arrested him in Blythe last May, after Garcia — a sex-trafficking victim who was held captive in Guadalajara prior to meeting Hernandez — reported his possessive behavior and told authorities she wanted to get away.

“I think it’s interesting that he thought I was a cop, because I’m very uncharacteristic of a cop,” Will says.

“Yeah, you look like a skater kid,” says Will Senior, an affable buddy-dad who, in his free time, surfs and paints stencil-style portraits of jazz legends.

Will notes that he’d been wearing a double-XL shirt, baggy pants, and sneakers — hardly typical garb for off-duty law enforcement.

More likely is the account that homicide detectives related to Will Senior, in which the couple had been arguing in their car when Will happened down the street.

“So, maybe she said, to distract him, ‘Oh, hey, there’s that cop,’” Will Senior says. “There have been thoughts about that. That’s what she told the investigators. And who knows if what she’s saying is the truth or not? She’s trying to get out of a life sentence for being an accessory to the attempted murder of a police officer, the attempted murder of Will, arson, and grand theft auto.”

The rampage started when Hernandez set out to kill an officer who’d arrested him on a sex-abuse warrant ten days prior to his attack on Will. Hernandez was facing four felony counts of having sex with a minor, after Garcia reported him to police. Prior to the crime spree, he cashed out his $40,000 retirement fund, took Garcia to Lake Tahoe to get married, and, according to Garcia, strapped her into a bulletproof vest, saying, “We’re going to war.”

Hernandez allegedly shot or pistol-whipped and then robbed an off-duty San Diego police officer at an Escondido ATM only hours before the shooting in Hillcrest. The officer sustained a non-life-threatening head wound.

The couple then reportedly carjacked a man at the College Grove Shopping Center, robbed multiple pedestrians, burned three getaway vehicles, and bought a white Craigslisted cargo van in Spring Valley.

Police raided Hernandez’s mother’s Escondido apartment on October 30, and officers countywide were provided with descriptions of the couple and the van.

Around 9:30 p.m. on October 31, the van was sighted outside downtown police headquarters but sped off before the couple was apprehended.

An hour and a half later, an officer spotted the van in Barrio Logan, where it began driving erratically before pulling over on Harbor Drive near Cesar Chavez Parkway.

Hernandez leapt from the van wearing a protective police vest, and fired what appeared to be a high-powered rifle on three officers. They returned fire, killing Hernandez.

Garcia, who was in possession of a 9mm firearm that may have been used on Will, surrendered; she is being held on $1 million bail. She faces 15 felony charges in connection with Hernandez’s crime spree, including holding a carjacking victim at gunpoint and threatening to “blow his head off,” according to a prosecutor.

Will Senior, however, says that Hernandez’s death and Garcia’s arraignment are of little consequence to his family’s position.

“When Will first got shot, a lot of people came to me and said, ‘Oh, yeah, they shot that guy down in the barrio.’ People were really into the fact that the guy got killed, and I wasn’t really sure what my opinion of that was. Sure, it’s great that the guy’s off the street. The guy was on a freaking rampage, kind of like that cat [Christopher Dorner] up in L.A. recently. But it’s interesting that people come at it from that angle; like, ‘Oh, it’s a good thing he’s dead.’ Well, it doesn’t change anything for me. My boy’s still real hurt. That’s all we care about. Same for the young gal that was riding along with him. Some people want her to do life and all that, but again, it doesn’t change anything for me. I just want Will to get better.”

Will also says he doesn’t have a strong opinion about the death of Hernandez, though the flash of a smile suggests his approval at the mention of Garcia’s potential life sentence. Despite the senseless attack, Will thinks it’s “totally okay” for people to own guns.

“One of the first things I want to do when I’m back on my feet is get a concealed-carry license,” he says.

Will even sports a revolver sticker on the front of his helmet, alongside graffiti-crew logos and a piece by local artist Sergio Hernandez.

The attack has, on the other hand, polarized the family’s view of the healthcare system and of their insurance providers.

Marie’s maternal instincts are fully engaged. Her meticulous involvement in Will’s recovery has saved him from at least one potentially lethal error.

She recalls an instance when Will became dehydrated and began to lose cognitive function. He couldn’t remember his therapist’s name. He was nodding off. Marie took him to the hospital and the doctor suggested an MRI. To this day, Will has fragments of a hollow-point bullet lodged in his skull and shoulder. Marie stopped the neurologist in his tracks.

“Thank god Marie was there, because it could have been fatal,” says Will Senior. “It could change everything. The neurologist didn’t know. I was stunned by that.”

The day prior to my visit in early March, Marie received a phone call from a woman at the neurologist’s office, asking if Will had gone to his radiology appointment to get a head scan for the bone flap that will cover the unprotected right side of his brain. Marie told her, “Yeah, of course, he went two weeks ago.”

“So, we’re assuming that this bone flap is being made,” she says. “It takes two weeks. But nobody went and picked up the film, to go take it to the lab, so the bone flap can be made. And I’m thinking, Why are they calling me? Why can’t they call the hospital and find out if I went? Will always jokes that I should wear a lab coat, because if I didn’t research as much as I did, if I didn’t take notes and listen, there’s so many things that could have fallen through the cracks. I don’t know how people do it who aren’t educated, or who don’t feel like they need to know. So many things have fallen apart, and I’m on it 100 percent. The system is so broken. There’s so much middle management, things get lost or not communicated.”

Like, say, broken ribs.

“When Will got shot, they had to revive him,” says Will Senior. “He was so far gone. He’s been to the ‘other side.’ So, when they revived him, they broke a rib, which is common. But no one ever mentioned that until about four months in.”

Will diagnosed himself.

More troublesome was the time an insurance-issued therapist came to visit them in Rancho San Diego. It was so apparent that he had not read Will’s file, they asked him to leave. Then there was the time Marie had to fight with a hospital not to release Will the day before Thanksgiving with only a half hour’s notice.

“I guess my thing with the insurance is that they really dictate where he can go and what he can and can’t do,” says Marie. “The people they send have to be authorized by them, and many times they’re people who we never would have chosen for Will. Or insurance doesn’t want to pay, so they like to act like he plateaus [in his recovery], which is not the case. That’s one thing I would really love to change about insurance. They don’t care about the patient. They don’t care about his physical well-being.”

In the beginning, they had to live two weeks at a time, because the insurance company reevaluated Will’s progress biweekly. Marie was constantly looking for a new place for Will to go.

“I don’t know how anybody could do this with an eight-to-five job, not even remotely,” says Will Senior, who, along with Marie, hasn’t had time to work since the attack happened. “I really question that. That’s where the system breaks down.”

Thanks to his parents’ efforts, Will is well on his way to recovery. Now at his mother’s house in Bankers Hill, he passes the time resting, watching movies, and talking with friends using FaceTime.

He’s still in a lot of pain and has trouble sleeping, in addition to constant hunger and bouts of uncontrollable laughter. He’s on a regimen of medication for spasms and nerve pain stemming from damage to the brachial plexus in his right arm, which may be permanently unusable. He’s also had some difficulty with short-term memory and simple reasoning: he can forget about food in the fridge or that someone left the room a few minutes ago.

He’s also shown extraordinary progress, such as picking up Tagalog from Filipino therapists while he rehabilitated at Learning Services.

“His brain’s trying to repair itself now,” Will Senior says. “It’s shooting off signals, like if you shoot off a call on your cell phone and you’re waiting for someone to answer on the other end. That’s kind of what’s going on with his arm. [At first,] he couldn’t move his left leg or his left arm at all because the right side of his brain was shot. Now it’s starting to rewire, and he’s starting to get a little bit of movement. So that’s a really positive sign.”

“The part of my brain that’s affected is supposed to be about impulse and inhibiting emotions and stuff,” says Will, “so I should be a total wreck and screaming all the time, and having Tourette’s but I haven’t had that at all. I have had trouble with inhibiting thoughts; like, I’ll hear a song from a show and it’ll be revolving in my head for three days. My pragmatics have been a little off; I’ll cut people off or interject. But it’s all good. I feel strong mentally, and I try to exercise it a lot, thinking of ‘what year was I born,’ and trying to think about it with a…a…”

Will trails off. An exhausted, distant look comes over his face.

“You lost your train of thought there,” Will Senior says, chuckling empathetically.

“Yeah,” says Will.

We talk about Bukowski books and Tarantino movies for a minute before Will says, “I remember the word I was thinking of. Strategies. I’m always trying to think of new strategies to remember things, to bring things up in my head that I’ve lost.”

At this point, Will has been sitting in his wheelchair for seven days straight.

“This kid needs tons of physical therapy,” Will Senior says. “Marie’s been hashing through the system, trying to get it all rolling again. It’s just a shame that you can be in a facility where you’re making progress and then you just run out of real estate with the insurance. They bounce you out into the real world. You have to scoop it up on your own and get funding. That’s what the fundraisers are all about, to keep pushing Will in that direction and get him going again.”

A therapist from Learning Services arrives a short time later to give Will his first session since he was discharged. The family is paying for his services out-of-pocket and with proceeds from previous fundraisers, but stopping therapy now is out of the question. The therapist believes he can get Will walking again. In the meantime, Will continues painting with a brush attached to a tongue compressor. He’s already plotting to get back on his skateboard.

“I’m stoked to hang out with my chick from San Francisco” — he smiles, though he is clearly very tired — “to hang out with all my friends, go to the beach, drink beer after a year or two. Just live a normal life, you know? I’m really excited to feed myself, drink water on my own, use my iPad, try to mob around on a cruiser.”

Will adds with a laugh, “I have to be a hesher for the rest of my life.”

Note: There will be a fundraiser for Will Barton at Fifty Seven Degrees wine bar (1735 Hancock Street; Middletown) on Sunday, May 19, 3:00–6:00 p.m., featuring live music by Zbonics (Zak Najor of the Greyboy Allstars).

Donations to help the Barton family offset medical costs should be sent to the “Friends of Will Barton Fund” at Chase Bank, 1740 Rosecrans Street, San Diego, 92106.