Scott then had his producer call the newsroom to push harder. Turned out, NPR’s two sources had no real knowledge of what was going on. The first was somebody employed by the Pima County Sheriff’s office. The second worked for another Arizona congress-person and wasn’t even in Tucson. From those two flimsy “sources,” NPR chose to broadcast confirmation of Gabby’s death to the world.
Within the next twenty minutes, the network realized it had rushed its erroneous news onto the air irresponsibly. Scott e-mailed me back: “NPR now withdrawing its report.” (The incident was so distressing to Scott that he considered whether the network, his home for almost thirty years, was a place where he still wanted to work. In the end, though he told his bosses that NPR’s recklessness was “indefensible and reprehensible,” he did not resign. He was the conduit for a letter of apology that Gabby and I received from the president of NPR.)
From the plane, we watched the cable networks pull back on their reports about Gabby’s demise. But even though we knew Gabby was alive, we still had no idea how serious her injuries were, or whether she’d still be alive when we reached Arizona. We sat there, mostly in silence. It felt surreal to be stuck in that cabin, 30,000 feet in the air, watching TV footage from the scene of the attack interspersed with old photos of Gabby, smiling happily. I wished the plane could move faster.
It takes two hours and fifteen minutes to fly from Houston to Tucson. We still had an hour until we’d arrive.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tucson
On January 8, there was no countdown clock. I’m used to lots and lots of preparation for big events. They typically culminate with the winding down of a tiny digital clock on one of the displays on the flight deck of the space shuttle orbiter. As the clock strikes zero, 7 million pounds of fire and thrust are unleashed in an instant, sending me on a planned trajectory at a very high rate of speed. Then, once I arrive in space, I have multiple critical decisions affecting the lives of me and my crew.
On January 8, however, instead of a clock, there was just the ringing of my phone. “Mark, it’s Pia . . .”
That phone call sent me hurtling on a path with no clear trajectory, but with multiple critical decisions that would need to be made on behalf of the woman I loved.
I often think of how Gabby described that day: “Shot. Shocked. Scary.”
In some ways, January 8 is now a blur. In other ways, so many moments feel heightened and will never leave my memory.
The shooter had bought his gun, a 9mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol, at a sporting-goods store. He purchased his bullets the morning of January 8 at a Walmart. He traveled to the Safeway in a taxi, wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt. He came to kill, bringing four magazines containing ninety bullets. The rest of his story—his past, his problems, his frightening behavior before the shooting—is all available elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands of those entries online that now mention my wife also mention this man. So there is no need to give more space to him here except to say that at about 10:10 a.m. in Tucson, as Gabby began cordially meeting her constituents, he shot her at point-blank range and she fell to the ground.
Gabby had been standing in front of the glass window of the Safeway, between the American flag and the Arizona state flag. She was the shooter’s first victim.
The man fired thirty shots randomly into the line of people gathered to talk to Gabby. Police said every one of his bullets pierced a human being. Five people died at the scene, and those of us who love Gabby grieve deeply for all of them. There was a richness to each of their lives.
Gabe Zimmerman, Gabby’s community outreach director, was shot in the head and died not far from where Gabby fell. It was Gabe who had cheerfully organized the Congress on Your Corner event. At age thirty, he was handsome, charismatic, and engaged to be married. Trained as a social worker, he had a contagious devotion to public service, and Gabby really admired him and appreciated the work he did assisting her constituents. He was almost like a younger brother to her, and she saw him as an empathetic extrovert who was going places. No one knew it, but Gabby had planned that one day Gabe would become her district director, after Ron Barber retired. Had Gabe lived, there’s no doubt he would have continued to contribute to the world in meaningful ways.
John Roll, a sixty-three-year-old Republican, was the chief federal judge in Arizona. He had just attended mass and came by the event to thank Gabby for a letter she had written requesting a judicial emergency in Arizona. He and Gabby had been discussing the large volume of immigration and drug cases in Arizona’s overstretched federal courts, and she had advocated for increased funding, which Judge Roll appreciated. He had served with distinction on the federal bench since he was appointed there in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush. As a jurist, he was considered fair-minded and compassionate, a man who always tried to find time to talk to law students and answer their questions. He was the father of three sons and had five grandchildren.
Phyllis Schneck, seventy-nine, was a homemaker from New Jersey who came to Tucson each winter. She had lost her husband to cancer after a fifty-six-year marriage, and her life was now focused on her church and her three children and seven grandchildren. Her family later described her to the media as a voracious reader and “a frustrated librarian.” She had even catalogued her collection of National Geographic magazines according to the Dewey Decimal System so her kids could easily find information for their school reports. Phyllis was a Republican who wasn’t politically active. Still, she came to meet Gabby to discuss her concerns about border security.
Dorothy Morris, a seventy-six-year-old retired secretary, had attended the event with her husband, George, a retired United Airlines pilot. They’d been married fifty-five years and friends said they were inseparable. George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to save Dorothy’s life by pushing her to the ground and covering her with his own body. He was shot in the shoulder, had a broken rib and a punctured lung, but survived. Dorothy, known affectionately as “Dot,” died underneath him.
Dorwan Stoddard, also seventy-six, came to meet Gabby with his wife, Mavanell. The couple had known each other in high school, but spent most of their lives married to other people. They reconnected after they were both widowed, and married in 1996. Dorwan, a retired road-grader, traveled the country with “Mavy” in a motor home. When the shooting started, he and Mavy dropped to the ground and Dorwan got on top of her to protect her. Mavy was shot three times in her legs. Dorwan died while saving her life.
The youngest shooting victim, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, was shot in the chest. She had come to the event with a fifty-eight-year-old family friend, Suzi Hileman, because she had a growing interest in government and politics. On the drive over to the Safeway, she was still unsure of what question she’d ask Gabby. While she was standing in line, Suzi leaned down next to her and said, “Someday, when you grow up, you could be like Gabrielle Giffords.” Suzi later told me those were the last words the little girl heard before she was shot.
Christina-Taylor was, by all accounts, very special. She served on her school’s student council and played on an all-boys baseball team. She was born on September 11, 2001, but never let the date of her birth define her. In the aftermath of her death, much would be made of the fact that she came into the world on a day marked by violence, and left the world on another tragic day. But those who loved her spoke of her urges “to be a 9/11 baby who represented hope and peace.” She carried herself with maturity and had a winning sense of humor. She was patriotic and loved wearing red, white, and blue. She liked to tell her parents, “We are so blessed. We have the best life.” What might she have offered the world if she had been given a chance to grow up?
The thirteen people who were injured at the Congress on Your Corner event included Suzi Hileman, shot three times while she tried to shield Christina-Taylor with her body. Ron Barber, Gabby’s district-office director, was shot in the face and leg. Gabby’s community-outreach coordinator, Pam Simon, sixty-three, w
as shot in the wrist and chest. One of the bullets lodged in her hip. Others were wounded in their arms, legs, feet, backs, and knees. A bullet grazed the head of a retired Army colonel. All of these victims, along with those who were murdered, were in a mostly enclosed space between concrete pillars and the wall of the Safeway. There was no easy escape.
After the shooter ran out of ammunition, he had tried to reload, but a woman named Patricia Maisch risked her life and grabbed the clip. Other constituents, Bill Badger and Roger Salzgeber, bravely fought the man to the ground. They held him down until police arrived. “You’re hurting my arm,” he said to them.
When emergency crews arrived, they found bodies and blood everywhere. It was chaos, with a lot of bystanders trying to do whatever they could. As three medical helicopters landed in the parking lot, paramedics had to figure out who was still alive, and of them, which victims were “immediates”—those who most urgently needed help. Seven of those alive, including Gabby, were deemed “immediate.”
After a paramedic named Colt Jackson got to Gabby, he asked her, “Can you hear me?” In response, she squeezed his hand. One of Gabby’s interns, twenty-year-old Daniel Hernandez, had remained at her side, his hand pressed against her head to contain her bleeding. As Daniel lifted Gabby up and cradled her, Ron Barber, on the ground and wounded in the face and leg, looked over at them. Ron noticed that Gabby’s skirt was hiked up in the wake of her fall, and he watched her pull down the skirt with her left hand. Gabby was always modest in how she dressed. While Ron tried to will himself not to pass out from blood loss, he thought to himself: “Maybe there’s a sliver of hope for Gabby. She’s still who she is, striving to remain modest even in the wake of a horrific injury.”
At about 10:40 a.m., Daniel accompanied Gabby to the ambulance, and she was rushed to the University Medical Center.
Meanwhile, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor was given CPR at the scene, and then loaded into a separate ambulance. Paramedics continued CPR on her during the ride to the hospital.
Medical guidelines suggest that shooting victims can be declared dead if they don’t respond after fifteen minutes of CPR. Christina-Taylor had been receiving CPR for more than twenty minutes when she arrived at the hospital, but given her age, doctors didn’t want to let her go without the most aggressive attempts to save her. After opening the little girl’s chest, Dr. Randall Friese, a trauma surgeon, used his hand to massage her heart. He had blood pumped into her heart through an IV line, but it wouldn’t beat. The chief resident took over and kept trying, as Dr. Friese learned that another severely injured victim had arrived.
That victim was Gabby.
When Dr. Friese reached Gabby, he took her left hand and twice asked her to squeeze it. Still conscious, she complied but could not follow his commands to squeeze her right hand. The brain injury had already severely damaged her ability to control the right side of her body.
A breathing tube was inserted in Gabby’s throat as doctors worked frantically to determine the extent of her injuries. Her skull was fractured and her brain was swelling. She had fractures in both eye sockets.
Gabby was taken into surgery right away, where doctors removed much of the left side of her skull, in pieces, to relieve the pressure caused by the swelling of her brain. The pieces of skull were placed in a freezer in case they later could be used in reconstructive surgery. Even though bone and metal shards from the bullet had gone deep into Gabby’s brain when she was shot, the surgeons didn’t attempt to remove what they couldn’t easily reach. Yes, there was a risk of infection. But doctors knew they could do further damage to Gabby’s brain if they tried digging for stray pieces of bone or bullet.
As all of this was going on, and I was on that plane bound for Tucson, Gabby’s parents were making their way to the hospital. After Gloria had gotten the news that Gabby had been shot, she had begun to pray. As she described it, she had gone into a metaphorical “closet” and closed the door. She’s a Christian Scientist and she prayed silently to herself. “I knew Gabby was OK,” she later told me. “She was God’s child.”
At the hospital, as Gloria and Spencer waited for Gabby to emerge from surgery, a psychologist approached Gabby’s sister, Melissa. “I think your mother is in shock,” he said.
Gloria heard him. “I am not in shock!” she said. “I am praying.”
After a while, Gabby’s family was moved to another room. “Are you putting us in this room because our daughter is dying?” Gloria asked the nurse on duty there.
“No, but expect the worst,” the nurse said. Gloria returned to her private prayers and meditations.
Meanwhile, Pia, Gabby’s chief of staff, was still in Washington, arranging to fly to Tucson. On her way to the airport, she stopped at Gabby’s office on the Hill, where about ten staffers and former staffers had gathered. Gabby had hired a young, energetic, idealistic group. They tended to be people who felt things deeply. When Pia arrived, the emotions in the room were overwhelming. It fell to her to tell them that Gabby was alive, though critically injured, that two fellow staffers were also shot, and that Gabe Zimmerman had been reported dead.
It was a crushing announcement for the group. Gabe was their friend. For some, he was a mentor. Jennifer Cox, Gabby’s loyal operations director, had even dated Gabe for a while. Everyone was crying about Gabe, crying about Gabby, crying about Pam and Ron, cursing the senselessness of it all.
Before Pia left, she told them, “Take care of each other.”
Just about then, at 2:30 p.m. Tucson time, the plane carrying me, my mother, Claudia, and Claire landed at Tucson International Airport in the area reserved for private planes. Two police cars were waiting for us.
We were driven straight to the hospital, where I arrived feeling very apprehensive and scared about what the doctors would say. Having been an emergency medical technician when I was a teen, dealing with gunshot wounds in the inner city, I knew what a bullet to the head usually means: long-term disability, paralysis, an inability to speak, a loss of cognitive function. It was likely very bleak. But then I thought about Gabby: She’s tough. She’s a fighter. She’s a tireless worker. I had a clear, uplifting epiphany that Gabby would do what she needed to do to claw her way out of this.
I was ushered into a room at the hospital where I met her doctors, all of them weary from the day they’d just been through. Besides Dr. Friese, there was Marty Weinand, Mike Lemole, and Peter Rhee. They showed me her CAT scan. I’d recently had an MRI of my own brain for some space research on the optic nerve, so I was familiar with the landmarks and some of the anatomy. “Your wife is going to survive,” Dr. Rhee told me. “But she could be in a coma for four to six months.”
By that point, Gabby had been taken out of surgery and was on her way to the intensive-care unit, but we still weren’t allowed to see her. All we could do was wait.
In my mind, I was thinking of how I’d need to prepare myself mentally for the long haul, of how I’d have to pay close attention to every medical decision to help Gabby recover. That would be my job. As Gabby’s mom prayed silently, I told myself: “Focus, focus, focus.”
Seeing Gabby for the first time that day was a great shock. Even when you know what to expect, nothing fully prepares you for seeing someone you love in such a critical state.
The doctors had done an emergency shave of all the hair on the left side of Gabby’s head, which was bandaged. She still had her hair on the right side. She was comatose, hooked up to a tracheotomy tube and other lines.
Her face was black-and-blue and her head was terribly swollen. It looked as if it was twice its normal size. I took it all in and then I told her how much I loved her. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I had to say it.
“You’re going to make it through this,” I told her, my voice breaking, “and we’re all going to help you.”
I took Gabby’s hand and noticed that there was caked blood under each of her fingernails. I thought about everything that she and the other victims had endured that day.
I tried not to cry.
As I stood there at her bedside, a slight bloody tear fell from her left eye. I reached over and, very tenderly, wiped it away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sunrise
I made no attempt to sleep the night of the shooting. I just sat in the chair by Gabby’s bedside, holding her hand. I slept a couple of hours the second night, still in the chair.
In those first few days, Gabby’s skin was alarmingly yellow. Her eyes were closed, bruised and bulging. She had tubes in both arms, and as a precaution, doctors had her connected to a breathing tube. She was able to breathe on her own, but they hoped the ventilator would prevent windpipe infections and pneumonia. Eventually, they’d do a tracheotomy.
On the second day, doctors adjusted Gabby’s level of sedation so they could draw her out of her medically induced coma to do some testing. “Show us your fingers,” Dr. Rhee said to her, and Gabby, eyes still closed shut, was able to weakly lift two fingers on her left hand. She did it one time. “That’s a great sign,” the doctor told us. The part of her brain that processes instructions was not fully damaged, even though the bullet had traveled the full length of her left hemisphere at a thousand feet per second. Also, all things considered, she was phenomenally lucky: The bullet hadn’t sliced a major vein or artery in the brain.
Had the bullet passed through the area connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, it is unlikely Gabby would have survived. There would be too much damage. But the doctors told us that her ability to follow a command meant the centers in her brain were at least partially intact and communicating with each other, a positive sign. By keeping Gabby mostly in a medically induced coma, doctors were able to limit the electrical activity of her brain, which would help her brain tissue heal. The biggest risk: In the days ahead, tissue that surrounded the bullet’s path would be dying, exuding fluid, which would lead to more swelling. If the swelling got too bad, additional surgery would be necessary.
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