Margaret Dean - Endurance - A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

I liked Gabby from the first time I met her, and I’ve only gotten to like her more over the years. She treats everyone the same—she is interested in everyone she meets, no matter who they are, where they are from, or what political party they vote for. She wants to help everyone she comes across, and she was completely dedicated to her work as a congresswoman on behalf of the people of Arizona. That was why it was so hard to fathom what had occurred. This sort of random violence should never happen to anyone, but it seemed especially awful that this should happen to her.

I called Mark. He was hurriedly packing his bags in Houston as we talked and had arranged to fly to Tucson as quickly as possible. He told me he’d received a call from Pia Carusone, Gabby’s chief of staff, telling him about the shooting. Pia told him that Gabby had been shot at a public event, that an unknown number of people had been hurt or killed, that Gabby’s status was uncertain, and that he needed to get to Tucson right away. Mark said okay and hung up—then immediately called Pia back and asked her to repeat everything she had just said. The idea of his wife being shot was so shocking, it simply hadn’t sunk in. He needed to hear Pia say it all over again to be sure that it was real.

Mark and I agreed we would connect again as soon as he landed in Tucson. Not long after, mission control called to tell me that the Associated Press was reporting that Gabby had died.

I immediately tried to call Mark again, but he was already in the air on the way to Tucson with our mother and his two daughters. Our good friend Tilman Fertitta had lent them his private jet so they could get to Tucson as quickly as possible. This is the kind of thing Tilman does for his friends, and I’ve always been grateful for the way he stepped up that day. I called Tilman to find out what he had heard.

“Gabby’s not dead,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “All the news media are saying it.”

“I don’t know for sure, but it just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “She went into surgery, and she should still be in the operating room.”

One of the things I like about Tilman is that he immediately sees through bullshit. Even with a subject completely outside his expertise, like brain surgery, he questions everything, and most of the time he’s right. I took hope in his words.

The next several hours were some of the longest in my life. My mind kept traveling to my brother—what he must be feeling, not knowing whether he would ever see his wife alive again. I called Amiko and my daughters and repeated to them what Tilman had told me: regardless of what they were saying on TV, it didn’t make sense that Gabby was dead. Soon after Mark landed in Arizona, I got him on the phone.

“What’s happening?” I asked the moment he picked up. “They’re saying Gabby died.”

“I know,” he said. “I got the news on the plane. But I just spoke to the hospital, and it was a mistake. She’s still alive.”

There is no way to describe the relief you feel when you’ve been told someone you care about is alive after spending hours thinking she was dead. We knew Gabby would still have a long and hard road ahead of her, but knowing she was still drawing breath was the best news we could have hoped for.

I made dozens more calls that day and the next—to my brother, to Amiko, to my mother and father, to my daughters, to friends. Sometimes I wondered whether I was calling too much, whether in my effort to be there for them I was becoming intrusive. That first day, I learned that thirteen other people had been injured in the shooting and six had been killed, including a nine-year-old girl named Christina-Taylor Green, who was interested in politics and wanted to meet Gabby. I talked to Mark and Amiko a dozen times that day.

The next day, we had a videoconference with Vladimir Putin that had been planned long before. I was surprised by how much of the time he took speaking directly to me. He told me that the Russian people were behind my family and that he would do anything he could to help. He seemed sincere, which I appreciated.

On Monday, President Obama announced a national day of mourning. The same day, I was to lead a moment of silence from space. I don’t get nervous easily, but this responsibility weighed heavily on me. This would be the first public statement from my family. As the time grew near, I called Amiko at work in mission control in Houston. I confided to her that I was uneasy—I didn’t know exactly how long a moment of silence should be, and for some reason I had focused on that seemingly insignificant question.

“It should be as long as you want,” she assured me. “As long as feels right.”

Her assurance helped. At the appointed time, I floated in front of the camera. I’d put a great deal of thought into the brief remarks I’d written, but I wanted to sound as if I was speaking from the gut rather than reading from a prepared statement—because I was.

“I’d like to take some time this morning to recognize a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Tucson shooting tragedy,” I said. “First, I’d like to say a few words. We have a unique vantage point here aboard the International Space Station. As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems inviting and peaceful. Unfortunately, it is not.

“These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another. Not just with our actions, but with our irresponsible words. We are better than this. We must do better. The crew of ISS Expedition Twenty-six and the flight control centers around the world would like to observe a moment of silence in honor of all the victims, which include my sister-in-law, Gabrielle Giffords, a caring and dedicated public servant. Please join me and the rest of the ISS Expedition Twenty-six crew in a moment of silence.”

Those of us who have had the privilege to look down on the Earth from space get the chance to take a larger perspective on the planet and the people who share it. I feel more strongly than ever that we must do better.

I bowed my head and thought of Gabby and the other victims of the shooting. Just as Amiko had assured me, it wasn’t hard to sense when the moment was complete. I thanked Houston, and we went back to work for the day. On the space station, we followed our normal routine. But I knew that on Earth some things would never be the same.

MY BROTHER had been assigned to the second-to-last flight of the space shuttle program, a mission to deliver components to the International Space Station. He was scheduled to fly on April 1, less than three months after the shooting. Gabby’s condition was stable, but she had a long road of surgeries and therapy ahead of her. He knew that if he was going to step aside and let someone else command that mission, he should do it as soon as possible so the new commander would have time to get up to speed.

It wasn’t clear whether NASA management would make the decision or if Mark would be allowed to decide for himself, and the uncertainty added to Mark’s stress. And in the early days after the shooting, he wasn’t sure what he would choose if it were up to him. He wanted to be there for Gabby as she started the long process of recovering from her catastrophic injury, but he also felt a duty to see his mission through. He and his crewmates had been training together for months, and a new commander would not know the mission or the crew as well as Mark did. We talked on the phone about it many times, but in the end, it was Gabby who made the decision. She would have been devastated if the shooting had robbed him of his last chance to fly in space. She urged him to go.