Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [95]
Gabby had ambitions to possibly run for the U.S. Senate. But unlike a lot of politicians, she didn’t fantasize about her own run for president. She always thought men are more apt to have that ambition, and history certainly has proved that true. “Women don’t generally have the ego to think they could be president,” Gabby once told me. “And when women lose elections, you rarely see them again. A man loses and he feels the need to come back, to try again, to run for something else.”
Gabby thought men often have a harder time facing rejection in the work world. She believed women generally have a greater ability to move on and go in a different direction, or to return to their families with a renewed sense of purpose. If Gabby ever lost her seat in Congress, she figured it would be her last election. She’d do something else. “There are a lot of capable people who can do this job,” she’d say. “I don’t need a lifetime hold on the office. There are many things I can do with my life, and many other ways I can make a contribution.”
Gabby was certainly ambitious. She just resisted being obsessive and unrealistic about it. And she felt a bond with smart, driven women who tried to think the same way.
Four days after Gabby was shot, her friends Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida came to the hospital to see her. They were nervous walking into the room. How would they find her?
Gabby was motionless in her bed, nonresponsive. Her eyes hadn’t opened since she was shot on January 8. Both women were tearful as they talked to Gabby about the fun they’d have together after she recovered. “You’d better get better!” Debbie said. “We need you!”
I wanted Gabby’s friends to be closer to her bedside, so I moved farther back in the room and stood beside Pia, Gloria, and Spencer. (Pia took my cell phone and began shooting video of Gabby and her two friends together.) Nancy Pelosi was there, too. As a leader in Congress, Nancy had come to show her concern and let us know about the out-pouring of support on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
The five of us in the back stood silently as Debbie and Kirsten kept talking to Gabby. Debbie has what she herself has described as a thick “Long Island Jewish” accent. It’s very distinctive. Gabby could pick out Debbie’s voice across a crowded room.
As Debbie spoke, all of a sudden, Gabby’s left eyelid began to flutter. Maybe Gabby was thinking, “I know that voice!” Or maybe it was, as Debbie and Kirsten later put it, “the power of sisterhood.” In any case, I pushed myself forward to see this moment. “Open your eyes, Gabby!” I said again and again, my voice rising, urging her on. “Can you see me? Open your eyes!” And then she did just what I asked. All of us in the room, including Gabby’s parents, were overcome with emotion.
Gabby really opened just her left eye. The other was covered with a bandage. But it was an amazing moment. At first, her eye was just a slit, but then she opened it wider. “Honey, if you can see me, put your thumb up,” I said. We could tell she was using every ounce of energy to comply, and to focus her one eye on those of us in the room.
Her left arm rose from the bed, her thumb pointed toward the ceiling, as we wiped away our tears.
When Dr. Lemole learned what had happened when Gabby’s friends visited, he smiled. “We are wise to acknowledge miracles,” he said.
That same day, January 12, President Obama and the First Lady also visited Gabby and others who were injured. The president had come to town to speak at a public memorial for the shooting victims, but he first wanted to stop at the hospital.
Before he arrived, a question came into my head. I said to Pia, “If Gabby could talk and was able to ask the president for something, what would it be?”
Pia didn’t hesitate. “She’d want the president to visit the border, to see what’s really going on down there.” Over the years, Gabby