Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [92]
I also wished she could know what was going on outside University Medical Center. It was a remarkable sight. Strangers were leaving thousands of get-well wishes, flowers, gifts, blankets, prayer shawls, candles, and handwritten notes with prayers. The spontaneous memorial was a massive outpouring for the dead and the wounded, and it grew each day. A total of nine hundred stuffed animals were left there and would later be donated to two children’s hospitals in Tucson. On the day Gabby was shot, a young soldier from the war in Iraq left his Purple Heart for her, saying she deserved it more than he did. Another Purple Heart was left by a Vietnam veteran who described himself as a conservative Republican. He wanted Gabby to have it because she “had been through a battle.”
A World War II veteran wrote a note saying that on October 10, 1944, his twenty-second birthday, he suffered a brain injury. He was hospitalized for a year. He wrote to offer Gabby encouragement. “I went on to graduate from college, get married, have three kids, and work as a sales manager until I retired in 1985. I played softball and volleyball until last year. I’m now eighty-eight and still kicking. Perseverance conquers all.”
C. J. Karamargin, Gabby’s communications director, handled media interviews outside the hospital, along with Pia. They were touched that the local reporters, having covered Gabby for years, were especially upset by the tragedy. Gabby had a good rapport with journalists, and some of them had tears in their eyes as they asked questions about her condition. One cameraman asked to restart an interview because he was crying and shaking the camera.
I’d sometimes head outside and walk around the displays after dark, just so I could feel the goodwill and positive energy. Wearing a hat so I wouldn’t be noticed, I’d pass signs on the front lawn with messages such as: “Fight Gabby Fight!” Gabby would be greatly moved if she knew that so many of her constituents were praying for her. These were the people whose doors she had knocked on over the years. Now they were coming out of their homes to wish her well.
Every night a mariachi band arrived to play on the front lawn of the hospital complex. They came to be part of something special—a spontaneous vigil for those who died and those still recovering. Maybe they knew Gabby was a huge mariachi fan. They weren’t expecting that she’d hear them, but their music did make its way up to her hospital room.
The Tucson Girls Chorus also came by to perform, as did Native American singers from the Tohono O’odham Nation. And every morning, in the darkness before sunrise, a lone drummer would arrive outside the hospital and start beating her drum very slowly. She’d keep beating until an hour after the sun had risen. One morning, I spoke with her. “I am doing this out of respect for my congresswoman,” she said. “I hope and pray this will help her heal.”
To me, it was only a drumbeat. But who knows? Maybe she was playing a role in Gabby’s recovery.
In those earliest days, I determined that the best thing I could do to help Gabby was to become her fiercest advocate. She had several doctors caring for her, including Dr. Rhee, the chief trauma surgeon, Dr. Lemole, her neurosurgeon, and the ophthalmologist Lynn Polonski, who would need to perform ocular surgery.
I was grateful to her doctors—they had saved her life—but I was also insistent. “I want Gabby to have the best possible care,” I told Dr. Rhee. “You guys have been great, but I want to get the best people in the country to weigh in on the medical decisions we’re making.”
Dr. Rhee didn’t act on my first or second request. Maybe he didn’t fully recognize how serious