Spot on, Betty P. I completely agree that the pace and tempo of the investigation into Max's death indicates that the police had no suspicions of any foul play on behalf of Rebecca or her sister, or Jonah.
However, I disagree that the doctors did not know about Max's cord contusion until autopsy. I firmly believe that the evidence that they did know is in his medical records.I believe they knew this before Rebecca died. I also believe with strong certainty that they told both Jonah and Dina about this, even if it was not completely apparent on the first MRI-- certainly on the second MRI it was evident. Once the initial radiographs demonstrated no bony damage to the cervical spine, with the enormous sagittal skull fracture, and prolonged cardiac arrest, they absolutely suspected severe cord damage. And even if by some strange chance this was not communicated to Dina and Jonah (or not understood by them), the very fact that he had a documented 30 min arrest (and likely a few min longer than from when EMT's arrived) from blunt head trauma gave him less than a 1% chance of survival on admission to Rady. Docs would have not been even cautiously optimistic, imo. I think the best Max ever achieved after admission to Rady was a level of some cardiovascular stability for a brief period of time. I do believe they told them as gently as they could, over several conversations, but I have never believed Dina's stories that everyone thought Max was going to make it, and just need a tutor for a few months. I think that the process to establish brain death began within a 2 days at most. I think the rapid pace at which Jonah's physician friend arrived also indicates how dire his prognosis was.
I think there is a good chance the reason Howard Luber immediately dropped what he was doing and flew in to help Jonah and Dina understand what was going on with Max, and be an advocate for them, as well as emotionally supporting them, is that Max was not expected to live. (Does anyone know if Luber has a busy practice? Not easy for a busy internal med doc to cancel days of clinic, hospital rounds, get other docs to cover hospitalized patients, etc and fly out with just a few hours notice.)