Mary Reuland leaned over the hospital bed and nestled her head on the chest of Konrad Reuland, the oldest of her three football-playing boys, a 6-foot-6, 270-pound NFL tight end who had been in a coma for almost two weeks.
It was the morning of Dec. 12, in the intensive care unit of the UCLA Medical Center, just hours before doctors declared her 29-year-old son brain-dead from an aneurysm that ruptured behind his left eye on Nov. 30.
“Something in me, I don’t know why, but maybe it’s a mother’s instinct … I just layed my right ear on his chest and listened to his heart beating all day, from morning until we had to leave,” Mary Reuland said.