Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' friends say it's nothing short of a miracle: Days after being shot in the head point-blank, the injured congresswoman opened an eye Wednesday for the first time.
Two of her closest friends from Congress, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., were in Giffords' Tucson, Ariz., hospital room at the time. Both had traveled to Arizona on Air Force One with President Barack Obama to attend a memorial service for the victims of Saturday's shooting rampage.
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama immediately headed to University Medical Center after landing in Tucson, and spent about 10 minutes with Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. Soon after, Gillibrand and Wasserman Schultz, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, got their chance to visit.
The women became close friends while they were all serving in the House. Their professional bond turned personal, with Giffords and her husband going on double-dates with Gillibrand and her husband at Matchbox, one of their favorite Washington restaurants, and taking summer vacations to New Hampshire with Wasserman Schultz's family.
These were the memories they were sharing with Giffords when the congresswoman started to signal that she may have known they were there.
"We started talking about all the things we plan to do when she got better. 'Gabby, you’ve got to get better because we have to have another double-date, we’re going to take you out for pizza,'" Gillibrand told NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams.
"So we were really trying to tell her how much we miss her and love her and how we wanted her to know we were with her every step of the way, and that’s when she began to really started to respond."
Gillibrand said she was holding Giffords' left hand when she started to flicker her left eye. (Her right eye, damaged in the shooting, is bandaged.)
"We're watching her and saying, 'Gabby, you can do it.' Everyone who loves her is around this hospital bed, her mother, her father, her doctor, her husband, her friends, all these people are there to say, 'Gabby, we're with you,' and she doesn't just put a thumbs up, she raises her entire arm."
"The doctors couldn't believe what they were seeing," Gillibrand said. "They were saying this is unbelievable progress, to see this."
"Mark started to tell her, ‘Gabby, if you can see me, give me the thumbs up sign,'" Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on "Hardball."
"He encouraged her and pushed her to do that. She kept opening her eyes a little more and a little bit more and suddenly, her arm went up … and she touched his arm and his ring."
"We were all just overcome with emotion. It was incredible," Wasserman Schultz said.
"Few things in our life will ever compare to being in that room when our Gabby opened her eyes," Pelosi said on "Hardball." "And you know, they’re blue, blue eyes, so there’s no mistaking they were open. Beautiful. And it was thrilling."
Kelly told the president and first lady about the development as they drove from the hospital to the University of Arizona's McKale Center, where Obama would speak at a memorial service. Kelly gave the president permission to tell the crowd about his wife's progress.
"Gabby opened her eyes," Obama told the cheering crowd. "So I can tell you: She knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows that we are rooting for her through what is undoubtedly going to be a difficult journey."