Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [3]
Inch by inch, I helped Gabby walk a dozen steps into the water, which splashed midway up our thighs. Given that hole in her skull, a fall could be deadly, so I remained alongside her, holding her arm and her waist, balancing her. I was being vigilant, but it was also nice to be so close to her.
Though the water was warm, an almost perfect 75 degrees, it was at first too cold for Gabby. Still, with the splash of each wave, she moved forward, determined to regain some small part of her former life.
What happened next was almost magical. As Gabby gazed out across the Atlantic with wide eyes and this huge, happy grin, I felt almost mesmerized just looking at her face. And that’s when it hit me: For the first time since the shooting, Gabby looked absolutely joyous.
“Awesome!” she said. “Awesome.”
The water started feeling warmer to her. The sky was clear and very blue. “You really love this, don’t you, Gabby?” I said to her.
“Yes, yes,” she answered. It almost brought a tear to my eye, seeing her so happy.
Gabby sat in her chair with her feet in the water. I sat in a chair next to her.
“You know what would be great?” I said. “In the future, we ought to buy a small house near the ocean, so you can swim.”
“Yes,” she said. “Great!”
“Maybe we’ll get a little fishing boat. Or a sailboat. Maybe on a lagoon, somewhere where the water is warm.”
“Yes!”
It felt good to tell her this, to talk about a plan that had nothing to do with a medical treatment or physical rehab or speech therapy.
“Waves,” Gabby said. “Ocean!”
She then became quiet, preferring the soft sound of the waves to her halting voice.
I studied her face, which was luminous. In a lot of ways, she still looked like the beautiful, vivacious woman I’d fallen in love with. But there were differences. Her head was misshapen because of the missing piece of skull and the collection of excess cerebral-spinal fluid. She no longer had that full blond mane familiar to so many people from photos taken before she was shot. Her hair, which had been shaved for surgery, was very short, and had grown back in her natural dark-brown color. And she now had a full set of scars: one on her neck from her tracheotomy, one on the left side of her forehead, marking the spot where the bullet entered her brain, one over her right eye, which was also damaged in the attack, and a set of scars toward the top of her head that allowed her neurosurgeons the access they needed to save her life. Though she used to wear contact lenses, she now had to wear glasses. Because of her injuries, she’d lost about 50 percent of her vision in both eyes.
I took it all in. “You look great, Gabby,” I said. And she did. Despite everything.
Gabby smiled at me. She knows I’m a sucker for that smile of hers. Then she looked back out toward the horizon and her smile widened as the waves lapped against her feet.
I knew what she was thinking: That in this brief moment, it felt as if everything was almost back to normal. That maybe, someday, she’d be whole again.
CHAPTER TWO
A New Year
“Spoon,” Gabby said. “Spoon.”
This was the word in her head and on her lips on the afternoon of February 13, five weeks after the shooting.
She was sitting in speech therapy holding a photo of a wooden chair and staring intently at it. She was trying, almost desperately, to describe what she was looking at.
“Spoon,” she said again.
Angie Glenn, her speech therapist, a young woman of good humor and great patience, corrected her. “No, Gabby, not a spoon,” she said. “It’s something you sit in. You sit in a . . .”
“Spoon,” Gabby said.
Angie tried again. “You sit in a . . .”
Gabby wished she could answer. That was clear by the intense look on her face, by the way she moved her left hand in a slight circle, as if the motion might bring her the word. But she couldn’t come