While many have died or were severely wounded in the Colorado shooting during the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises after alleged gunman James Holmes open fired on a theater in Aurora, one woman's story has the makings of a miracle.

Petra Anderson, 22, was shot four times; three times in her arm and once right through her nose, according to The Associated Press, by a bullet that lodged up her cranium and punctured the back of her skull. Doctors said her injuries were considered critical and worried that brain damage could impair her speech, motor and cognitive abilities.

Anderson underwent a five-hour surgery where doctors removed the bullet with ease, discovering the wound had little impact or damage to her brain despite having been traversed a vein.

According to Anderson's pastor, Brad Strait, a miracle defect in her brain saved her life.

The doctor explains that Petra's brain has had from birth a small 'defect' in it, Strait wrote on his blog. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull...Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it.

But in Petra's case, the shotgun buck shot...enters her brain from the exact point of this defect. Like a marble through a small tube, the defect channels the bullet from Petra's nose through her brain. It turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain.

Doctors said that Anderson is already able to speak and walk with ease and will make a full recovery, which her family attributes to a simple miracle.

She could have lost all kinds of function (if) the bullet traversed her brain, her mother Kim Anderson told the Sacramento Bee. I believe that she was not only protected by God, but that she was actually prepared for it.

Petra Anderson's miracle prompted her family and friends to launch an online campaign to support Petra, a recent graduate of University of Pacific, which has raised more than $32,000 so far.