Lester Holt

Dr. Autumn Klein had been rushed by ambulance to the ER of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center after slumping to the kitchen floor of her home.

Now the trauma team surrounding her was trying desperately to keep her vital signs going.

Alan Jennings, at the time a reporter with NBC's Pittsburgh affiliate WPXI, covered the story.

He recounted what doctors later said about that night.

She had this blank stare in her eyes, barely a pulse.

And they didn't know what had happened to her?

No, they didn't.

Autumn was struggling to breathe.

And then in comes the ventilator.

The ventilator, the machines are now taking over.

The machines taking over to keep her alive until they could determine what in the world was going on.

At some point, Alan, did they realize that this is one of their own?

This is that brilliant young doctor that works in the Women's Neurology Unit?

They did at one point.

I don't know that they would have treated anyone any differently, but she was one of them, one of the team.

When Autumn's husband, medical researcher Bob Ferranti, arrived in the trauma room, he tried to give the team some of his wife's medical history.

He explained she'd been on fertility hormones.

She had headaches, fainting spells, and that she generally was expressing that she hadn't been feeling well.

He told the ER doctors he thought his wife had suffered a stroke, though diagnostic tests said otherwise.

By then, Bob Ferranti had already called his father and mother-in-law at their home near Baltimore with the bad news.