Gabrielle Giffords' Husband Mark Kelly: She Gave Me a Neck Rub in ICU

Eight days after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head in a massacre that left six people dead, she was giving a neck rub to her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, according to ABC News.

Kelly tells ABC's Diane Sawyer he knows his wife faces a long recovery and says he might be willing to see the parents of assailant Jared Loughner, who is charged with killing six and wounding 13 others in the Jan. 8 rampage in Tucson, Ariz., while Giffords held an outdoor constituent meeting.

On Sunday, the three-term Arizona Democrat's condition was upgraded from critical to serious. Doctors have also replaced her breathing tube with a tracheotomy tube to allow her to breathe more easily and independent of a ventilator.

In what Kelly calls his wife's "typical" selfless behavior, he notes that even as she remains in intensive care, Giffords also "spent 10 minutes giving me a neck massage. I keep tellin' her, I'm like, 'Gabby, you're in the ICU. You know, you don't need -- you know, you don't need to be doin' this.' But it's so typical of her that no matter how bad the situation might be for her, you know, she's lookin' out for other people."

Kelly, who is set to command NASA's last space shuttle mission in April, said he knows the woman he wed in 2007, three years after they met in China, will have a difficult recuperation. "Gabby's got a long road ahead of her. We know that the recovery from these kind of injuries isn't measured in days and weeks. It's more like weeks and months. And so she's got a long, tough road ahead of her. But, you know, she's a really, really tough woman."

Kelly also told Sawyer he'd likely meet with the devastated parents of shooter Jared Loughner. "I'd probably see them. You know, I don't think it's their fault. It's not the parents' fault. You know, I'd like to think I'm a person that's you know, somewhat forgiving. And, I mean, they've got to be hurting in this situation as much as anybody."

Kelly, the divorced father of two daughters when he met Giffords in China in 2004, said being a parent gives him a degree of empathy. "Gabby has two step-daughters, and I have children." He said the Loughners surely love their son "and they must be, you know, as distraught over this as all of us are." The girls are now teenagers.

Kelly was in Houston training for the space shuttle Endeavor's spring mission when he got the word of the shooting. He flew immediately to Tucson and has been at her University Medical Center bedside virtually all the time since. Visitors have included President and Mrs. Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and two of Giffords's closest friends in Congress, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

On Wednesday night, when Obama addressed thousands of mourners at the University of Arizona, he announced that Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time since the shooting that evening. Kelly attended that service and also the Thursday funeral for Christina Taylor Green,who at 9 was the youngest victim. Aside from those outings, he has rarely left her side, continually holding her hand. "I just stayed because it seemed to comfort her."

Parts of Sawyer's interview will air Tuesday on several ABC News shows: "Good Morning America," "World News with Diane Sawyer," "Nightline" and on a special edition of "20/20."