(The Atlantic) – For decades, Eve Baer remained convinced that her son, unresponsive after a severe brain injury, was still conscious. Science eventually proved her right.

When the jaws of life freed him from the wreckage, Ian was still alive, but unconscious. “Please don’t die. Please don’t die. Please don’t die,” his mother, Eve Baer, pleaded over him at the hospital. She imagined throwing a golden lasso around his foot to keep him from floating away.

And Ian didn’t die. After 17 days in a coma, he finally opened his eyes, but they flicked wildly around the room, unable to sync or track. He could not speak. He could not control his limbs. The severe brain injury he’d suffered, doctors said, had put him in a vegetative state. He was alive, but assumed to be cognitively gone—devoid of thought, of feeling, of consciousness. (Read More)