Minneapolis, Minnesota (AP)

Jeff May turned to his brother, Shane, while lying in the emergency room after being seriously wounded in last year’s Red Lake school shooting. With his jaw shattered, Jeff figured Shane was the one who would be able to handle seeing him.

Holding Jeff’s hand, Shane knew his brother’s life had been changed forever. What he didn’t realize was how dramatically his own life would change.

“I was only 21,” he said later. “I practically just got raised in a day.”

In the year that followed, Shane would witness his mother, Jodi May, having a stroke; he would move back to the family’s house on the reservation and become the head of the family. He gave up his carefree bachelor’s life in Bemidji because his family – Jodi, Jeff, 16-year-old Anthony and 10-year-old Ashley – needed him.

Growing up, Shane was like many boys on the reservation. He loved playing basketball and pool. At 18, he moved to North Dakota, where he lived with his father and worked two jobs.

Eventually, he settled into a small house in Bemidji with two friends. He worked at the casino, and also at McDonald’s. He had his freedom. He had independence.

But the shooting last March changed everything.

Jeff May, trying to stop a 16-year-old Jeff Weise from shooting up the high school, was one of the students seriously wounded. He suffered a brain injury and remains paralyzed on the left side.

While Jeff was staying at a Fargo hospital for treatment, the family moved to a hotel across the street. Shane helped his mother handle media questions during the day and drove more than two hours to his job at Seven Clans Casino in Thief River Falls at night.

Jodi spent her days at Jeff’s bedside, until her body gave out on the last day of April. She was hit with such a severe stroke that the doctors said she might die.

“This is not like she lost a few shingles,” MeritCare neurosurgeon Dr. Alex Mendez said. “The whole house came down in this storm.”

Shane stepped up.

In June, he hauled his belongings into his mother’s home and settled into his little sister’s old bedroom. Jeff was discharged from the hospital on June 8. Jodi left Fargo in a wheelchair about a month later. She was driven to Bemidji, where she stayed at a nursing home.

Shane figured he’d get back to his own life in a few years, when Anthony, Jeff and Ashley got through high school. Maybe he’d pass his high-school equivalency exam and take criminal justice courses at Bemidji State University. Maybe he’d pursue a career as a lawyer or probation officer.

But for now, everything had to wait.

Shane struggled to take his mother’s place at home. He struggled with exerting his authority over the children. And he struggled with the daily chores.

Jodi used to make meals of stuffed green peppers or pork chops. Now, dinner was sometimes nothing more than a couple of cheap frozen pizzas. And there were clothes and dishes to wash and the house to clean.

And money was a problem. Making $8.43 an hour at the casino just wasn’t enough for the whole family. There was about $27,000 in donations and state crime victim fund for the Mays, but the checks were in Jodi’s name because she was still considered the head of the family, and she couldn’t cash them.

Tribal council members told Shane it was up to a judge to release the money, and a judge told him his hands were tied without the approval of the tribal council, Shane said.

Meanwhile, the electric bill was three months overdue, and Jodi’s cell phone – their only long-distance service – had already been cut off. Shane, who used to spend his paycheck on video games and take-out food, now needed to spend it to raise the family.

“I know I’m only 22,” he said at one point. “I feel like I’m 32.”

He sought help from his father’s sister, Irene Greene, and from Jodi’s boyfriend, Wayne Brown. Every evening, Shane and Wayne went over the day: How was Jodi? How were the boys? How were the groceries holding out? What else needed to be done? Then for five to six days a week, Shane left for work by 10 p.m. to get to his job by midnight.

Shane worried about Jeff and his recovery. He had to make sure his siblings were ready for the first day of school in September. But he hid his worry, at least from Ashley. Raising Ashley was different from raising his two brothers.

Said Shane: “(Ashley) was going to start asking me questions I didn’t know nothing about.”

He turned to Irene for help. Anthony, too, soon moved in with a best friend.

Financial relief finally came with $3,400 from a state crime victims’ fund, and Shane was able to pay off a raft of bills.

On Nov. 6, Jodi’s 41st birthday, she came home for her first visit since her stroke. Wayne, Shane and the others had prepared a feast of celebration, working for two days to make the house presentable.

For the first time since March 21, if only for an afternoon, Jodi May’s family was whole again.