16 Morpheous to the rescue

She heard the light sound of the door click and hurriedly turned around.

"Shit!"

"Was he still in when I was changing?"

Pulling her scrub down, she raced towards the door and swung it open. But he was standing at the nurse station discussing something with Elora. She should have been relieved, yes, definitely relieved, but it was disappointment that she felt instead.

Tapping her fingers on the doorframe, she got back in. A part of her got relieved instantly, for she wasn't wearing the best of her lingerie. A racer-back sports bra was not something that she wanted him to see her in or any man for that matter. She mentally rebuked herself for even having such vile thoughts and went back inside to focus on the details of the next operation.

About ten minutes later, when she came out of her chamber, she walked toward the nursing station, hoping to check on him before leaving for the OT. She didn't want to apologize for her rudeness, but a part of her was feeling guilty for giving him such a mundane unnecessary task out of her pang of jealousy.

But he wasn't there.

"Have you seen my assistant Manila?"

"He went to ER drug room for something!"

"OK! Page Dr. Van on my behalf that I will reach the OT in ten minutes." And she walked ahead, her eyes still glued to her tab as she was still checking the patient's condition upon whom she was going to operate. She didn't want to leave any room for error as this was a critical case.

But the moment she walked close to the ER drug room, her eyes turned left. The door was left ajar, and she saw him looking intently at the medicine boxes and writing something on a notepad.

'Did I give him too much work for day one?'

She pondered and walked ahead. Midway to the OT, she met Dr. Van, who had also changed into his scrubs.

"Dr. Caroline!"

"Dr. Van. Did you check my snapshot?"

"Oh, Yes! That was a good catch, Caroline. His thyroid level was indeed just on the borderline. And last year, a fatal Thyroid Storm case was reported for the CABG procedure."

"Yeah. I have asked Erica to have someone send the medication to the OT. It needs to be given before we administer anesthesia."

"Good God!" Dr. Van said and took a deep breath.

"What?"

"At this rate, you will soon replace me, Carol!" Dr. Van chuckled. "I feel like a human appendix now."

"You? Oh, please, doctor. Don't embarrass me!" she smiled and opened the scrub room of OT.

Picking up antimicrobial soaps, they both got busy washing their hands.

"By the way, where did you find that assistant?"

"Erm… family friend, you can say. Gramps had referred him."

"But must I say, he is far too skilled. I saw him stitching her up, and boy, he was good!"

'Thud'

The soap slipped out of Caroline's hands.

"Here!" Dr. Van handed her a new soap from the stock box along with his narrowed eyes and continued, "By the way did you know that there was no glitch in the traffic control room. Their logs show that all signals were correctly functioning."

"What?"

"Yeah. Quite surprising since people saw a red signal change to green with their own eyes. I just checked the news on my way. They are massively investigating it, but apparently, all the video cameras around the signal developed some glitch, and nothing has been captured."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, quite mysterious. Isn't it?" he said and walked inside the OT since he was done washing his hands, but Caroline stood there, pondering for a while till Erica called her in.

Wearing her gloves, she walked up to her patient and spoke gently.

"We are going to inject a small dose of Levothyroxine to reduce your thyroid level. You will just feel a small pinch. That's all."

As the patient lightly nodded, Erica injected 1ml of Levothyroxine into the IV. They wait for five minutes and then administer general anesthesia. They were about to start the procedure, but their attention was taken away by the loud knock on the door.

"Open the door, please!"

"Open the door!"

Caroline turned, her heart in her throat because she knew very well whose voice that was. A staff nurse immediately opened the door, and Morpheous rushed inside.

"Don't give anesthesia to that patient!"

"What the hell is going on?" questioned Dr. Van, removing his face mask.

"Someone came to the ER drug room to fetch Levothyroxine," Morpheous started to explain.

"I had asked for the medicine. But what is the problem?" Caroline interrupted.

"It's not the correct medicine. I guess in a hurry, wrong bottle was taken. I think what you have given him is Lymothyroxine."

Erica quickly picked up the used bottle from the discard bin and muttered, "Indeed. We gave him the wrong medicine, doctor!"

"Holy shit!" Caroline cursed and immediately stopped the IV line. The anesthesiologist started checking how much anesthesia had gone in. 

"How did you know?" Dr. Van asked, turning towards Morpheous.

"I was doing the drug room inventory and after completing it, I rechecked for Levothyroxine vials left and I found that all twelve of them were intact whereas we were one short of Lymothyroxine."

"Whoa!" Dr. Van exclaimed.

"But how did you know we are using it in OT?" asked Caroline looking at him suspiciously, her brows knotted together.

"Erm… actually this morning I had checked your OT slot and saw your request for Levothyroxine. Kind of a lucky guess I must say," he said and shrugged his shoulders.

She wasn't convinced but this was not the time to play who did what. Pissed with the whole upturn of events, she turned toward the anesthesiologist. "How much has gone in?"

"Just 7%."

"Erica, we need something stronger. Get me two vials of Synthroid."

But before Erica could go, Morpheous took out two vials of Synthroid from his pocket and placed them on the medicine trolley. "Here, I thought you might need them." He said and left the OT nonchalantly, closing the door as gently as possible behind him.

But her jaw was left open in awe.

How did he? How did he know?