Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [29]
Scott finally headed home from space on March 16, traveling with two crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. The conditions that day at the landing site in arctic Kazakhstan were terribly cold and windy, but the capsule landed safely, on its side, in knee-deep snow. A medical tent was supposed to be erected, but conditions were too treacherous. Instead, Scott and his crewmates were taken away in helicopters to the city of Kostanay and then directly back to Houston.
I was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps as he came off the plane. We never hug or shake hands. Never. It’s always been that way, since we were kids. But on this day, for the first time, we reached toward each other and shook hands. It was a spontaneous act of affection, though I know it sounds pretty limited compared with the embracing that goes on in a lot of families.
My brother had to undergo the usual battery of postflight medical tests. He had muscle pain, not uncommon after a long-duration flight, and he wasn’t walking normally yet. All of us who’ve been in space know that, at least for a few days after we return, we’ll likely be banging into walls when we try to turn a corner. We lose our ability to judge when it’s time to turn left or right.
Given his deficiencies, Scott wasn’t allowed to drive yet. So the next day, his girlfriend, Amiko, a NASA colleague of ours, drove him to the rehab hospital to see Gabby.
Gabby was in a therapy session, out of her room, when they arrived. I was waiting for them, and offered a heads-up about what to expect. “You have to be patient,” I said, “and give Gabby time to respond. And she can’t follow when two people talk at once, so don’t do that.” I explained that Gabby understood most everything, but wouldn’t necessarily be able to answer them. “You know what it’s like when you’re trying to remember a word and you can’t come up with it, and it’s so frustrating? That’s what it’s like for Gabby every minute of every day.”
Scott looks like me, only six minutes younger, and many people can’t tell us apart. But when Gabby was wheeled in, she had no trouble. “Scott!” she said to him, not me.
He kissed the top of her head and sat down beside her. At first, he was shocked by Gabby’s appearance. Her head was misshapen, her hair was short and a darker color, her right arm was so still. He was almost startled. But as he spent time with Gabby, he saw that her personality remained: her smile, her laugh, her trademark attentiveness.
He showed her the turquoise rubber bracelet he’d been wearing. I’d sent it up with the crew of space shuttle Discovery when they visited the space station a month earlier. The bracelet, worn by Gabby’s staffers, family, and friends, has a heart, a peace sign, and the word “Gabby” on it. “I wore this in space,” Scott said.
“Yay!” Gabby said, and pumped her left fist.
I watched my brother and my wife interacting. Here were the two people I am closest to in the world. Both were safe, and we were finally all together. It felt good, but I wasn’t the type to get mushy.
When Scott stood to walk across the room, struggling on his land legs after 159 days in space, I gave him a little dig. “Hey, you’re pretty wobbly,” I said. “Gabby is doing a better job of walking than you are!”
If I have a choice between complimenting my wife or my brother, it’s always going to be her. Always.
My brother likes to say that Gabby is way too good for me. If you look at my background and Gabby’s, he’s got a point. On paper, we’re not exactly a natural fit.
Unlike Gabby, who had her own horse when she was young, I grew up on a lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder. I didn’t have a horse when I was a boy in West Orange, New Jersey. I had rocks, which my brother and I would sometimes launch like missiles in the direction of other kids who had their own rocks.
While