our lives are much different than it was before. much, much different. >> and in the future, will gabby run again? >> it's looking pretty good that she'll be in a position where she can make the decision to run for her seat again. >> mark kelly for the hour. this is "piers morgan tonight." almost a year ago, jared lee loughner shot arizona congresswoman gabrielle giffords in the head during a voters event in a parking lot. she suffered a major brain injury, six bystanders were killed, more than a dozen injured. and at first it wasn't clear that gabby giffords would survive. but she did and would go on to make remarkable strides that few of us could have ever imagined that fateful day. her husband, retired astronaut, mark kelly and gabby, chronicle their experience in a new book called "gabby, a story of courage and hope." and mark kelly joins me now. mark, it's an extraordinary book. i mean it's been an extraordinary year. your lives were remarkable anyway. you know, you're one of america's great astronauts. gabby, a hugely successful congresswoman. you didn't need anything else to make your lives more dramatic. and then this fateful day, everything is turned upside down. take me back to that day. how did it start for you? >> well, it was -- for us, it was typical. a lot of saturdays, we would spend apart. she would spend most of her time in her district in tucson on the weekends, but i was home that weekend with my daughters, claudia and claire, and it was a typical saturday and just received out of nowhere a call from gabby's chief of staff, peter kerisone who said, i don't know how to tell you this, but gabby has been shot. and, you know, just that, you know, put us on this trajectory, this roller coaster ride that's lasted for the last ten months. it's been quite incredible. >> i mean, you're a trained astronaut. and i would imagine part of that training is being able to stay calm under extreme pressure. and also, you have to go into each mission with the possibility, based on history, that you may not come back. so you're used to extremities of pressure and so on. could anything prepare you for that call? >> well, it's interesting. you know, i've spent 25 years flying airplanes in the navy and then 15 years flying the space shuttle at nasa through four missions. and after having a chance to reflect on it later, i did see, you know, some parallels between what i had to deal with in flying airplanes and flying the space shuttle and what i had to deal with in handling this situation. i mean, it often came up that i would -- i would think about these things in the context of what's the information do i have? you know, what kind of decision do i need to be -- do i need to make and do i need to make the decision right now, or can this wait? so, you know, to some extent, it did -- it did prepare me for dealing with this. >> reading the book, you can't really comprehend what you've been told. and you ring back to get more information, didn't you? >> yes, so i wasn't even sure -- after i got off the phone, it was a very short conversation, and then i woke my younger daughter claire up. she was sleeping. and i started putting things in motion. and then i just said to myself, is this really possible that gabby actually just got shot at her congress on your corner event which i knew she was going to. so i had to look at my blackberry and see that, yes, he did actually call. >> it began to flash around the world. i was on a plane, i remember, across america somewhere reading on the internet this extraordinary breaking news story. and not to the credit of the media at all because a lot of the information was wrong. a lot of people were beginning to write as a fact, reputable news organizations that gabby had lost her life. were you hearing the same kind of erroneous information? >> yes. i was on my friend's airplane, a gentleman who was very, you know, very generous, and when i said i need to get to tucson right away, and he said i'll have my airplane ready for you. and by probably within an hour and a half, two hours after this happened, we were in the airplane flying to tucson. when it was reported by a couple cable news networks that gabby had, in fact, died. and, you know, fortunately, other folks who were watching that, and tillman in particular was able to get me the information that, "a," there just seems to be something wrong with this story. and i started making some phone calls. >> for those minutes, however long you had -- >> it was probably about 30 minutes. >> for 30 minutes, you thought your wife was dead. >> yes. yeah, it was tough. it was a tough situation. my mother screamed. the kids starting crying. i just got up, walked into the -- into the airplane's bathroom, and, you know, just broke down. and it was a difficult period of time. but in hindsight, looking at it, you know, that was the low point. and it's all been pretty positive since then. >> well, certainly compared to that half an hour. >> yeah. >> life has got incredibly happier for you, because your wife is still with you. >> yeah, immediately. as soon as we found out she wasn't -- >> how did you find out that she was still alive for a fact? >> well, so the airplane also had a phone. so i called gabby's chief of staff, pia, who said, well, this doesn't sound right either, because gabby was in surgery, and if she had, in fact, died, somebody would have told her mother, who was outside the operating room nearby. and gloria hadn't been told anything. so then they checked, and she was still, you know, having her first of a few neurosurgeries. >> the plane lands, and you rush to the hospital. what is the first thing that you find there when you get there? >> well, it was a busy day. and i'm not even so sure if i have everything that happened in the right order anymore. but i remember going into a room where gabby's parents and her sister, melissa, her parents, gloria and spencer were in this room. and then initially one of her neurosurgeons and the trauma surgeons that treated her were there, and they explained that she -- she had this gunshot wound to the -- you know, to the left side of her head. and they went -- went in and did surgery and removed part of her skull. and then she is going to -- she'll survive. and beyond that, they couldn't really tell us much. you know, from a former life when i was in high school, i used to drive an ambulance in an inner city. and i've dealt with gunshot wounds to the head before with patients that i've picked up, and i knew what the consequences of that was. you know, i knew that, you know, first surviving that injury is pretty miraculous, very low percentage of people survive it. and then people that -- it's very rare that somebody actually recovers from it. >> so even though you were being given good news, there was a sense of foreboding about what the future would hold for you. >> absolutely. i mean we really had no idea. i mean, i was always positive. i knew -- i know gabby very well. i know if anybody can pull themselves out of this, this horrible situation, it's her. you know, that she has it within her to fight back. you know, first fight back to survive and then to fight back as she does every single day to regain, you know, these abilities that she has lost. >> did you sense -- again, on this plane now hearing gabby giffords is not dead. she is fighting back in surgery. i remember reading this. and everyone going crazy, and it seemed like the whole world was now living this in realtime willing her to survive. were you getting any sense of how this was playing out around the world, or were you very much locked in that room now? >> i was pretty focused on what was going on with her and really not paying attention to what was going on, you know, on the outside. i mean, it wasn't until a few days later that i even knew the name of the person that had shot her. so i was focused on what was going on in the hospital and making sure she got the right care. later, we, you know, certainly found out and started receiving massive amounts of e-mail and text messages, and just about people praying for her. >> there's an amazing moment, mark, in the book. and this is when you see gabby for the first time. and i'm going to read some of this, because it's just so compelling and tells the story better, i think, than anything i could ask you would possibly do. seeing gabby for the first time today was a shock. even when you know what to expect, nothing fully prepares you for this. the daughter has done the emergency shave of all of the hair on the left side of her head which was bandaged. she has hair on the right side. she was comatose. hooked to a tracheotomy tube and other lines. her face was black and blue, her head was terribly swollen, looked 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, we're going get through this, i told her, my voice breaking, and we're all going to help you. incredible stuff to read. i mean i can't even imagine that moment for you. as i say, it's one of many remarkable extracts in this book. and i read it in one sitting, because it's just so -- it's so raw. when you saw her like that, if you're honest, looking back on it, did you fear then you were never going to get your wife back in any kind of normal form? >> so, yeah, part of me feared that. you know, you -- when you asked one of her doctors, one of trauma surgeon, very honest guy, he said, you know, we don't know. she could be in a coma for the next four months. so part of me felt like, you know, this is going to be, you know, a really steep climb for her. and we didn't know how far she was going to be able to pull herself out of this. like i said, though, i also knew that she's a fighter and she doesn't give up, and she's fighting every day. you know, every single day to get back. >> people use the word "miraculous" a lot, particularly in relation to this kind of situation. but when you consider the facts, which i think were presented to you by the experts, that if the bullet had crossed hemispheres, i think is how you put it, a little bit higher, then she would have been killed. a little bit lower, she would have been killed. a little that way, she would never have spoken again. a little the other way, she would never have walked again. >> yeah. >> it is truly miraculous that she has managed to walk, to talk, and to live. isn't it? >> yes. >> when you consider what happened. >> and that was based on a conversation i had with her neurosurgery residents in the middle of the night when nobody else is around and they start speculating on exactly where the bullet had traveled and looking and showing me the c.a.t. scans. and, you know, they talked about obviously that if it crosses hemisphere, it's really bad to have both sides of your brain damaged. and, you know, the parts of your brain that control, you know, your organs is much lower, and the part that controls your legs much higher. and it went through an area where those guys said she'll be able to walk, speak. she'll, you know, cognitively should be pretty good. but the one thing that it looked like would be one of her biggest obstacles to overcome ultimately would be the use of her right arm, and that's been true. >> let's take a break. we'll come back and talk about the recovery. i want to know about the moments when you first began to realize, i'm getting my gabby back. >> okay. [ grunts ] hand cramp! it's cramping. go ice that thing. sorry. hand cramp... ahh... 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[ cheers and applause ] >> gabby opened her eyes for the first time. >> that was president obama during a memorial ceremony days after the shooting, giving the nation some good news on gabby giffords' condition while mark kelly and michelle obama listened. mark kelly is back with me now, another extraordinary moment, the president of the united states giving a medical update on your wife. you holding hands with the first lady. do you remember much of that time, or is that all just a blur to you? >> well, about ten minutes after he walked out of the room, kirsten gillibrand and debbie wasserman schultz, two of her very good friends from congress were there in the room with us, and they were talking to gabby, you know, for a good amount of time. and she just opened her eyes. and she had been basically in a coma since then. and it was a pretty exciting moment to know that, you know, we -- we have part of her back, she is conscious. and then about an hour later, i mentioned that to the president. and then he asked me, would it be okay if i said this during the memorial service? and i thought that was completely appropriate for him to do that. >> did it feel slightly surreal, all this? the president of the united states standing there, you know? just such a crazy situation that you've got yourself into here as a family. >> it was hard to believe, you know, such a -- you know, devastating experience for our family and then for the families of the other victims. i mean, six of which did -- lost their lives. you know, the family of christina green who lost their 9-year-old daughter. i mean just such a tragic, tragic -- >> you dedicated the book to the others who lost their lives. with gabby, what was the moment for you when you thought for the first time, i may get my wife back? >> even before she opened her eyes, she would, you know, with her eyes closed, she took my ring off my finger once. and just like she would normally do if we were sitting at dinner in a restaurant, she would flip it from one finger to the next. >> as she used to do? >> as she used to do, just like i'm doing here, and she would just very naturally, you know -- so you knew she was in there. that there was that part of her. >> that's fascinating because that's -- that's a conscious thing that she is doing. >> yes. >> which you recognize as being a thing she used to do. >> yeah. and the doctors asked me that. is that something she has done before, and i said, yeah, that was what she did all of the time. >> what was the first word she spoke? >> it was reported she said the word "toast." which she did around that day. she was asking for toast. she got -- you know, the hospital food, they were giving her the same thing for breakfast, but before that she said the word what and she said it over and over again, what, what, what. and it was almost like her brain was rebooting up again and that's the word it picked. >> were you there when she first said that? >> yeah, i was standing right there. >> how does that feel? >> well, it feels great. you know she can say something. so it's a place to start from. and since then she has been spending a lot of time in speech therapy. and she gets better and better every day. >> this remarkable interview that you both did with diane sawyer for abc, i want to play a clip of it, which is gabby singing, actually. ♪ let it shine let it shine >> excellent. i know it's frustrating. but are you going to get through it? >> yes. >> say it like you mean it. are you going to get through it? >> yeah. >> when i saw that, it just sort of -- it cemented to me, and i'm sure to most viewers, the harsh reality of what she had been through. this wasn't some kind of movie. this was somebody going through a -- sort of complete out-of-body rehabilitation. and it was tough, hard, every tiny step of the way, right? >> well, you know, a lot of people have rehab that affects one part of their body. they're ee learning how to walk or relearning how to use their limbs or in her case, you know, the -- the speech. and she had to deal with all those every single day. so incredibly exhausting, hard work. but, you know, it's -- it was really great for me to see how dedicated her therapists were and how dedicated she was to it. and it's been -- those parts have been a really positive experience. >> how important was music? because it seems from the diane sawyer program that music played a really pivotal role in her rehab. >> so speech is mostly controlled on the left side of your brain. but music is on the right side. and gabby's right side wasn't injured. the bullet went through the left. and one of the ways -- so she very early on where she couldn't say a sentence, she could sing an entire song. and the speech therapists -- >> that's amazing. >> it's amazing. yeah, i mean -- >> did you know any of this before? >> i didn't know any of it. you know, i knew people -- they talk about left brain and right brain, but there is a lot of truth to that. so she would sing a song and the therapist kind of used that to help rebuild connections. they talk about the plasticity of the brain and that it's able to form new connections and they say music is a big part of that. >> were there particular songs or singers that seemed to have a particular effect? >> well, things she knew well. when i heard that she had sung like -- it was either happy birthday or some very simple song, that evening i said to her, i said -- and i didn't think she would respond at all. i said, can you sing "american pie?" and she went right into it. i was amazed like from beginning to end. i could not do that now. and she did the entire song from beginning to end. >> how extraordinary. >> it was pretty amazing. >> so don mclean has basically got a lot to be thanked for, right? >> yes, yes. and u2. i mean, she is a big u2 fan. so megan merrow, the therapist would play u2. >> and there is another clip i want to play from the diane sawyer show. this is when you start to talk to gabby about the shooting. >> died. >> sad. >> sad. sad. a lot of people died. >> it hurts. >> yes. yes, yes, yes. tough. tough, tough. >> it was quite a while before you could tell gabby that people had died. how did she react in the moment when you were able to finally tell her? >> well, we had a plan that we would tell her things as she asked. and in the beginning, she didn't ask many questions. it was very important that she knew what happened to her. so as soon as we thought she would understand this, i told her that she was shot, who the person was, and what happened. i didn't tell her about the other people that died that day. and she would read the arizona papers and the "new york times" every day and the "wall street journal" she'd go through it. sometimes she would see on the front page, in this case on this one day, saw the teaser article on the bottom that talked about her -- an update on her recovery. so it was very interesting to see her go to that page, and she wanted to read that article. it was kind of like she was saying, you guys have been lying to me this whole time, now i'm going to get the real truth. so i read her the article, and i saw ahead where it mentioned pe