Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [126]
Every day was full and challenging. But so far, so good.
Gabby kept improving after her surgery. The shunt was working well, and the fluid between her skull and brain had started to get back to normal. “Stop the presses!” Gloria e-mailed me, two days after the surgery. “Gabby just said, ‘I am optimistic!’”
Gloria was always reading books aloud to Gabby, and the latest was Learning to Breathe by photojournalist Alison Wright. The book traces the author’s spiritual and physical recovery after almost dying in a bus crash in Laos in 2000. Gabby and Gloria found it very inspirational.
Gloria told me that as she read, Gabby liked to close her eyes. “Are you still awake?” Gloria would ask. “Do you want me to keep reading?”
“Yes, yes,” Gabby whispered, still weak from the surgery.
A week after the cranioplasty, Gloria sent me an e-mail: “Tonight, Gabby was wide awake through the reading, and she nodded when the text told of the author’s determination to heal and never give up. She’s getting there, Mark.”
Those were tough days for Gloria. Spencer had to have surgery on his back, so Gloria found herself shuttling back and forth between wings of Memorial Hermann Hospital, visiting her daughter and then her husband. Sometimes she’d take Gabby in a wheelchair to see Spencer.
I tried to phone Gabby every day when she was awake, I wasn’t working, and we had a phone link to the ground. I got through on most days. Then one day, Gloria sent me an e-mail: “When I told Gabby you were trying to call her, her heart rate went up three points.” She said it reminded her of the popular Valentine line: “My heart beats for you.” She also e-mailed me a photo of Gabby, still wearing my wedding ring on her necklace.
When I could, I tried to send Gabby short updates on how the mission was going. One problem early on was a “wardrobe malfunction.” Before the launch, when I was so busy with Gabby’s care and my mission training, there were things that I just didn’t have time for: inconsequential stuff, like trying on the pants I’d wear in flight. On the second day of the flight, I put on my first pair of pants and realized that there had been a mistake. All of my pants were made for someone who was way taller than six feet. The pants weren’t even close to my size. Fortunately, my brother had left pants on the space station, which I found and used for the rest of the flight. It was only one pair, but it was better than freakishly long, giant pants.
As the sixteen-day mission continued, my crew and I were given some time in our schedule for special appearances, what the media sometimes refers to as a “cosmic call.” One highlight was an eighteen-minute videoconference with Pope Benedict XVI, the first-ever call to space by a pope. “Welcome aboard, your holiness,” I said.
I was touched that Pope Benedict mentioned Gabby, who was able to watch our encounter on NASA TV. Speaking to those of us on the space station, the pontiff said, “It must be obvious to you how we all live together on one Earth, and how absurd it is that we fight and kill each other. I know that Mark Kelly’s wife was a victim of a serious attack, and I hope her health continues to improve.”
We were grateful to receive a blessing for our safety from the Pope, and I got a kick out of the e-mail I received afterward from Gloria. She told me that Gabby was intrigued by the Renaissance painting of Jesus that was behind the Pope as he spoke.
Another conference call that we found very meaningful hit closer to home. One morning in space—a Sunday night in the United States—Mike Fincke and I fielded questions via a live video feed from four hundred students at Mesa Verde Elementary School in Tucson. Many of the students were classmates or friends of Christina-Taylor