I don't have anything to add to the wonderful story below so I'm just going to post this as I haven't seen it anywhere before.
Peace.
Gillibrand held Giffords’ left hand as she awoke
Q So tell us what it was like in there. You were just standing around a friend of yours and — just put it in your terms.
SENATOR GILLIBRAND: Okay, well, I’ll go, and then you’ll go — okay. Well, we were very excited that we were even going to have the chance of getting to visit her hospital room. We didn’t know when we first came whether we had that opportunity. And so when we did have the chance, we were so excited to get to see her. And when we came in the room, the doctor was there, her parents were there, Mark is there, and the Speaker — Speaker Pelosi and Debbie and I went in.
It occurs to me there are probably fair use issues involved so I'll cut a little out and then strongly urge you to click the link to Capital Confidential and read the whole thing for yourselves.
And then you have to recognize, her eyes hadn’t opened — we didn’t know that — and so she started to struggle. And one of her eyes is covered with a bandage because it was damaged in the gunfire. So her eye is flickering. And Mark sees this and gets extremely excited. And we didn’t — I didn’t know what that meant. And so he said, Gabby, open your eyes, open your eyes. And he’s really urging her forward. And the doctor is like perking up and everyone is coming around the bed. And she’s struggling and she’s struggling and it’s a good — we couldn’t figure it out, maybe 30 seconds, where she’s really trying to get her eyes open, like doing this, this, this.
And then she finally opens her eyes and you could she was like desperately trying to focus and it took enormous strength from her. And Mark could just — can’t believe it. I mean, he’s so happy. And we’re crying because we’re witnessing something that we never imagined would happen in front of us.
And so Mark says, he says — he said, Gabby, if you can see me, give us the thumbs up, give us the thumbs up. And so we’re waiting and we’re waiting and –
- snip -
And then she reaches out and starts grabbing Mark and is touching him and starts to nearly choke him — she was clearly trying to hug him.
And so like — she was — it was such a moment. And we were just in tears of joy watching this and beyond ourselves, honestly. And then Mark said, you know, touch my ring, touch my ring. And she touches his ring and then she grabs his whole watch and wrist. And then the doctor was just so excited. He said, you don’t understand, this is amazing, what’s she’s doing right now, and beyond our greatest hopes.
Go to CapCon and read the rest.
Go get',m Gabby. They tell us you are a fighter and it certainly sounds like it now. Show us. Make it happen. I want to be able to watch the US House of Representatives stand in applause on the day you walk back onto the House floor.
We all do.
Peace.
Update:
I've just received word that there is now an email setup for sending well wishes to Gabby Giffords:
giffordswellwishes@gmail.com
Here's a link to a brief story in The Hill about it
Senator Gillibrand's office has verified it.