Chapter 14 IN THE THEATRE

“DOCTOR ELIAS, YOU have spent enough time in there without making any progress! Stop whatever you're doing now. The press wants a report on what is going on.”

Marcus's voice was muffled through the door. He tried to turn the handle, but it was locked from the inside, so the door only rattled.

“Elias, I command you to stop every procedure you're doing right now, or else—” His voice rose. “Nurse Lilly, come and open this door this instant, or you will be fired!”

Lilly was startled all over again. She looked at Marcus's face through the glass door, then back at Elias. “Should I open the door, sir?” she asked. Doctor Marcus was her superior, and she clearly did not want to disobey him.

Elias pinned her with a hard stare before speaking. “Ignore him. You are in here with me, and the governor's son is dying in our hands. Focus.”

She nodded and tore her gaze away from the crowded doorway, forcing herself to look back at the open abdominal cavity.

“Suction,” Elias said.

She placed the suction device where the blood was pooling. “I see the new injury,” she said.

Elias nodded. “Needle.”

She handed him one of the needles. He placed it carefully over the pricked artery, and the bleeding immediately slowed. “Check his vitals.”

She looked over at the monitor and nodded. “His blood pressure is quite low, but he has lost a lot of blood, so that's expected. Apart from that, everything else is stable.”

“Good,” Elias sighed.

He could already feel the edges of his vision becoming blurry. His sight was beginning to tunnel.

He was exhausted, but he had to continue. He looked up at the digital clock and realized they had been inside for over an hour, yet the procedure still seemed far from finished.

A few minutes later, the artery he had accidentally damaged was completely healed. Elias carefully removed the needle and returned to repairing the other organs.

“Scalpel.”

Lilly handed him the scalpel, which he used to carefully remove some of the tissue that had been too badly damaged to save. Then he continued.

Minutes bled into hours. One hour became two. Then three.

By the fourth hour, Elias finally stood upright, slowly straightening his aching back.

The worst was over. He removed the acupuncture needles one by one and handed them to Lilly.

“Handle these carefully when you disinfect them,” he said. “After that, you can open the door and let the other surgeons move the boy to the main operating theatre upstairs to finish the surgery.”

“But, sir—” she tried to argue.

“Just do as I ask, Lilly.”

She nodded and began cleaning up.

Elias secured the pouch around his belt before removing his gloves.

The moment the door opened, Doctor Marcus looked ready to burst into the operating theatre. Elias immediately raised a hand. “That is a sterile environment. I can't have you entering there and messing things up.”

The other doctors stared at him with wide eyes. Elias was speaking to the head surgeon as if Marcus were one of his juniors.

“You can finish up,” Elias continued. “The boy is stable now. Move him upstairs and complete the rest of the surgery.”

“You!” Doctor Marcus growled. “I could have you investigated for this!”

“I saved his life,” Elias replied calmly.

“You gambled with his life!”

Two surgeons in fresh scrubs walked up to the bed and did an examination while everyone except Elias held their breath. After some minutes, they announced, "Everything looks to be good here. His vitals are very stable."

“Is it really a gamble when I know I'm going to win?” Elias asked with a smirk. Nurse Lilly stepped out behind him, her head lowered as she avoided Doctor Marcus's gaze. She had disobeyed him.

It was well within his power to have her fired on the spot.

“Come,” Elias said to her as he walked away from Marcus. “We just completed four hours of impromptu surgery, and you did well.” Lilly hurried after him.

When they entered the elevator and began heading toward his office, she stole a glance at him.

“What are you, sir?” she finally asked in a small voice.

Elias mulled over the question, unsure how to answer.

“What you did in there...” she continued. “I have never seen anything like that before.”

“Neither have I,” Elias replied honestly.

He could tell she had many questions, but he had no idea how well he could answer any of them.

Surprisingly, she did not ask another question. Instead, she said, “I have heard stories about something like this. My grandmother used to tell us stories about supernatural beings like you walking among us.”

“Supernatural beings like me?”

Elias laughed dryly. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Lilly immediately clamped her mouth shut. “I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry, sir.”

Elias regarded her curiously.

Was she going to tell everyone what she had seen inside the operating theatre?

Would anyone even believe her?

The elevator doors opened, as they stepped out, Elias immediately saw Harper waiting outside his office.

“What did you do?” she demanded as he approached.

“I did my job,” Elias replied.

“That's not what I heard,” she snapped.

“Well, what did you hear?”

Elias brushed past her and entered his office, draping his jacket over the coat rack.

“I heard that you bullied your way into the operating theatre and sent the surgeons working on the governor's son out of the room,” she said, following him inside. “Marcus is already calling the board to have you sanctioned for putting the life of a patient at risk.”

Elias scoffed and sat down.

“The life of the patient was already at risk.”

“And it's not just any patient,” Harper continued. “You can't play games with the governor's son!”

“Well, call and check how he's doing,” Elias said, reaching for his bottle of water.

Harper eyed him suspiciously, but she pulled out her phone and dialed the appropriate desk.

She listened for several seconds.

Then, like a balloon that had suddenly been deflated, all the anger seemed to leave her body.

When she ended the call and slowly placed her phone back into her bag, she looked at Elias differently.

There was something new in her eyes.

It was half respect. Half fear.

“What did you do?” she asked quietly.

Elias took a sip of water and screwed the cap back onto the bottle. Then he looked at her. “I did my job.”

She glared at him for some minutes before she walked out. As Elias hung tried to regain his strength, he felt something warm and wet run down his nose. He touched it carefully with his fingers and looked to see that it was his blood.

He was bleeding from his nose.