Only hours before, doctors had counseled her to consider her sonâs quality of life.
Ricky Atherton-Dudek, 15, was hooked up to a ventilator after suffering a traumatic brain injury when he crashed the car heâd been driving.
After the meeting with doctors in Grand Rapids on Nov. 13, Dudek returned to her sonâs ICU room and started talking with the nurse, telling funny stories about Rickyâs childhood, like the time the boy found an opossum playing dead and put it in a cooler.
Later, Dudek and her brother went back to the hotel where they were staying.
Dudek was smoking by the gazebo at midnight when she spotted it.