Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [143]
Gabby knew that even the inches are no cinch, but she listened very intently as Mike spoke. She had been a little down in the days before he arrived, and his visit lifted her out of her funk. “I can’t help people with their broken bones,” he told Gabby, “but I can help them with their broken spirit.”
Mike had a nice way about him. He told Gabby how well she was doing compared with where he was six months into his recovery. Gabby could see how far he had come. “My parents were praying I’d say a few words,” he said. “Now they pray I’ll shut up!”
He and Gabby laughed together over that line, which he had surely used before.
Mike stayed about an hour and Gabby hugged him before he left. They were two people, left for dead, who were both very much alive. He gave her a T-shirt. Written on the front: “Got hope?” On the back it said: “I do.”
After Mike’s visit, Gabby was in physical therapy and had a breakthrough. Her therapist placed two tennis balls on the table in front of her. She asked Gabby to pick up one tennis ball with her strong left hand and the other with her floppy right hand. Gabby firmly grasped the ball in her left hand. Her grip on the ball in her right hand was weak, but she was able to wrap her fingers around it.
“OK,” her therapist said. “As you slowly lift your left hand, I want you to try to make the exact same movements with your right hand.” Gabby’s brain was able to give clear signals to her left hand. The hope was that if she could move both hands simultaneously, the left guiding the right, Gabby might be able to retrain her brain.
Gabby concentrated, lifting her left and right hands in tandem. She actually willed her right hand to lift that tennis ball. One inch. Two inches. Three inches. She lifted the ball four inches into the air. It was a triumph.
When she and her nurse Kristy came home that afternoon, Gabby was grinning, eager to tell me. I was very proud of her. I had a real sense of the future: There’d be better days ahead for that limp noodle of an arm.
It was great to see Gabby’s progress on other fronts, too. She was asking more questions: “What time is it?” “Where is my brace?”
I thought it would be helpful if, when she wanted to know something, she began by saying: “Mark, I have a question.” Or: “Kristy, I have a question.”
She started saying that line regularly, and it helped her thought processes. Though her questions didn’t always begin with the words “what,” “who,” or “when,” they were definitely questions: “Having for dinner?” “Go for a walk?”
Meanwhile, I was constantly impressed by Gabby’s work ethic in rehab. She had a singular focus. She knew that success in therapy was her ticket back into the world.
One day, Kristy was telling Gabby about the items on her bucket list—the things she still needed to get to in her life. “I want to play the piano again,” Kristy said. “I want to visit South America. I want to go on an African safari.”
Then Kristy turned to Gabby. “So how about you?” she asked. “What’s on your bucket list?”
Gabby could have mentioned that having a child had been at the top of her bucket list. After all, two frozen embryos of ours remained in storage at the Walter Reed Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. It was still possible for us to have a child together, though given Gabby’s injuries, we’d probably need to go through a surrogate.
But Gabby knew she had to put such dreams aside. Kristy asked her again: “What’s on your bucket list, Gabby?”
Gabby had just one answer: “Get better.”
As the hot Houston summer continued, I noticed Gabby paying even closer attention to the news. She was more and more engaged in all the issues that had driven her work as a public servant. She was also more in tune with tragedies in the news.
On July 22, when a political extremist in Norway killed seventy-seven people, mostly teenagers, it was natural for all of us to think about the gunman in Tucson. I couldn’t help