A Chicago actor was shot. Months later, he's worked his way back to the stage

CHICAGO - On a Saturday in early April, Sheldon Brown was a 25-year-old Chicago actor having a normal night. He celebrated a friend's birthday over midnight chocolate chip cookies in Logan Square and warmed up to Frank Ocean in an old dive bar. As the cold evening tipped into early morning, Brown thought about taking an Uber home.

The financially strapped actor decided to save money and took the "L."

Brown woke up in a hospital bed hours later, his life upended, after a stranger opened fire a few blocks away from the Wilson Red Line station in Uptown. A bullet had pierced his left buttocks, torn through his abdomen, fractured one of his right pelvic bones and lodged in his hip bone. He wondered how he would continue to work as an actor after everything his body had been through.

Seven months later, after major surgery, piles of bills and dozens of pounds gained and lost, Brown, 26, is starring in "This Bitter Earth" at