“These surgeons were completely unaware that a camera was capturing every act they committed in the operating room. Unbeknownst to the medical team gathered in the operating room, a camera blinked in the corner, turning at a 360° angle and capturing everything they were doing.
The medical team was made up of neurosurgeons, a neurologist, a radiologist, an oncologist, an anesthesiologist, and eight nurses. They were a small army, but that was necessary to win the battle that they were about to start.
It had taken months for this medical team to be assembled. In the course of the weeks leading up to the surgery, they had been in many meetings together, ran simulations for how the surgery would go, and ensured that everyone understood what their roles entailed. It was a team of medical professionals, all of whom had more than 10 years of experience.
The patient had been prepared, and currently, she lay unconscious on the bed wearing a hospital gown. Her pale complexion was tinged with gray; her heart-shaped lips were dry. There were shadows underneath her eyes framed by her long eyelashes. This patient was beautiful despite her ill state. The team was hopeful that by the time the surgery was done, she would have a smooth recovery.
However, three doctors on the team had a different plan from the rest. It was a secret that only three of them knew and were determined to carry out. But what they didn’t know was that a camera was poised to expose them. The camera quality was high definition, transmitting clear footage to the cloud.
At 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, the surgery began. It was expected to last up to 24 hours at least, but there was no telling for sure since no one could predict the challenges that would come.
The three male doctors who had concocted a secret plan just so happened to be the same three doctors at the helm of the operations. While other health professionals would go on a break stretching for a few hours, these three doctors would have no break except for bathroom breaks or hydration. They had the most crucial role in the surgery.
About 8 hours into surgery, it was time for the first shift change. While others were relieved to have a few hours of rest, one nurse wouldn’t budge. She insisted that she was strong enough to continue. The three doctors glanced her way, wearing matching frowns of disapproval. Why wasn’t she leaving for a break like the others? They didn’t like it and carefully pondered on how to make her leave quickly.
The nurse’s name was Abigail, and she was suspicious of the trio. Something about them and how they set up the surgery schedule was fishy to her. She didn’t understand why they wanted everyone else to leave except them. She believed that they had a plan because the surgery assistant for the next shift had a full hour before they would arrive. It meant three male doctors, out of a medical team of almost 30 people, would be alone in the operating room with an attractive female patient.
Unaware of her train of thought, one of the doctors asked her to leave. Despite his polite tone, Abigail lifted her chin in defiance and told him that she was staying. Her words to her hearing sounded too aggressive, so she softened it by saying, ‘I’ll be no trouble. Honestly, I just want to watch you and support you in any way I can.’
The doctor rolled his eyes in exasperation and returned his attention to the patient. Abigail held her breath, not quite certain that she’d been given permission to stay. True to her assumption, one of the doctors paused the operation, came to her, grabbed her elbow, and walked her to the door. He swung it open, put her out, and shut it in her face.
Rage climbed Abigail’s face until the veins in her neck and face were popping. She was infuriated at his insolence. Whatever it was the trio were up to by themselves in that room, she was prepared to go to any lengths to catch them in the act.
Abigail hardly trusted doctors. She was of the opinion that a lot of them were a bunch of selfish jerks who cared for no one other than themselves. When she was young, she had wanted to become a doctor. She was smart and excelled at science subjects in school; teachers called her future promising. But their community had been traditional, and her parents were backward in thinking. Her parents had resisted the idea of her spending a lot of money and several years to become a doctor. They had wanted her to have some education, but not greater than the man she would marry. They wanted her to marry a man that they would approve of, have babies with him, and live happily ever after.
Embittered by their prejudice, Abigail had set off on a path to prove them wrong. She had worked so hard to gain a scholarship to study biology. Many of her classmates, like her, had wanted to get into medical school but had been disheartened by the tough criteria. It had mainly been the women who had been discouraged, and their negativity had rubbed off on Abigail so badly that she had failed the medical board exams. Most of those who pressed were men, and they had gloated. Yet these same men were womanizers, abusers of authority, and lacked empathy. It had hurt watching them get ahead, which was why she had encouraged herself to pursue nursing.
Abigail had worked tirelessly to reach her current level, and it always stung deeply whenever a male doctor belittled her achievements. She, too, had the perseverance to stay in the operating room for as long as they did. She felt it was her place to stay and watch over that innocent woman being operated on. Men, in her mind, were creatures of baser instincts and were capable of taking advantage of an unconscious woman. Abigail had heard nasty stories of doctors doing ugly things to their patients and getting away with it.
There was only one doctor whom Abigail trusted in the entire hospital. It was Dr. Mario, a doctor in his early 60s who had helped her secure a job at this present hospital. She rushed towards his office to ask him for help.
Dr. Mario sat behind his desk. He leaned forward in a swiveling chair and rested his chin on his folded hands before him. He was watching a scene unfold on a laptop. His brows furrowed in deep concentration, and his left knee jerked every now and then. It was plain that something was causing him anxiety.
A frantic knocking soon came on Dr. Mario’s door. He stood up to unbolt the door, and Nurse Abigail nearly fell in. She was breathing fast as she explained how the trio had removed her from the operating room. She expected him to be outraged, but he was calm. She didn’t understand; didn’t he also strongly dislike those doctors after what they did to him?
Dr. Mario was an oncology professor with over 40 years of medical experience under his belt. He had wanted his mentee to lead the surgery and had gotten offended when the hospital board had voted the mentee out. The mentee had been deemed unworthy to lead a surgery of such magnitude. Dr. Mario had backed his mentee, using his position of authority to speak up in his favor. He claimed that his mentee was a capable surgeon and that he was the kind of doctor who calculated his risks before taking on a dangerous surgery.
‘Is that why he persistently turns away more and more patients every year? Because he’s such a great calculator?’ one of the doctors on the hospital board had scoffed. He saw Dr. Mario’s mentee as an extension of Dr. Mario, the type of doctor who prioritized his accolades and reputation over truly making a difference in a patient’s life.
Dr. Mario only took on surgeries that were guaranteed 100% success. If there was a 50/50 chance, he liked to partner up with another professor doctor so that if any complications came up, he would pin it to the other doctor. But if everything went smoothly, he took the glory.
Dr. Mario sensed that this particular surgery the three doctors were carrying out would make his name. He had wanted a piece of that glory. He was no longer in his prime and couldn’t partake directly, but his mentee could. Dr. Mario knew the three doctors were exceptionally skilled and could make the surgery a success. So all his mentee had to do was to be in the room. But the Dr. Board had refused his request.
Embittered, Dr. Mario had gone out of his way to ensure that the trio of doctors failed one way or the other. He called Abigail to look at what was playing on his laptop. It took a while for her to understand what she was seeing, and once she did, she gasped.
‘Doctor, how did you—’ her question trailed off as she glanced at Dr. Mario, who was smirking. He had secretly installed the camera in the operating room and was capturing everything the doctors did. He was doing this to collect evidence of their wrongdoing so that he could get them fired and have their licenses revoked.
Abigail grinned in satisfaction when she heard this plan. She was in full support and joined hands with him to catch the doctors in the act and severely punish them.
Meanwhile, the three doctors, Davis, Henry, and Charles, were in the toughest surgery of their lives. These doctors were in their late 30s and were already top-consulted specialists in their medical fields. There were two neurosurgeons and one neurologist. They were so passionate about providing help to patients that they had studied hard since college to increase their skills.
Davis, Henry, and Charles also went way back. They had met during freshman orientation, become instant friends, and supported one another in their gradual climb in the
medical profession. They had been through so much together that this resulted in a beautiful synergy whenever they worked together. Each person knew the others’ strengths and weaknesses, as a result, they complemented one another, which created great efficiency.
This was why the three of them could handle the less tedious parts of the surgery themselves for an hour and let assistants rejoin them after. The patient, Miss Lucia, was someone they nearly turned away when she came to the hospital seeking help for her condition. The initial doctor that attended to her had deemed her condition too risky. He had said she couldn’t be treated at their hospital and wanted to refer her to an overseas hospital.
It had been Davis who had found Lucia on a bench right outside the hospital. He had been on his way for a lunch break. Initially, he breezed past her, but something about her had nagged at him, so he turned around. She was a stunning woman with dark eyes and hair as dark as midnight’s. If Snow White were a person, it could be Lucia. Yet, the aura of sorrow around her had been as thick as fog.
Davis had engaged her in mild conversation, asking her if she’d eaten and invited her to have lunch with him. While they had been making small talk, he’d been startled to learn that she had graduated from his alma mater, making her a few years his junior. They reminisced on things that had remained the same and things that had changed over the years. Lucia had opened up to him that she was a costume designer who had recently won a huge award in the entertainment industry. That had been the big break she had worked so, so many years to achieve.
Davis had congratulated her, but instead of happiness, tears had dropped from her eyes. She had tried to wipe them away, but he had been compassionate and warm. His attitude had prompted Lucia to burst into sobs. Everything had been going well for her until it didn’t. In fact, she was engaged, and it had been three months to her wedding when she’d started experiencing terrible headaches, unexplained numbness in her fingers and face, nausea, and hearing loss sometimes. But the height of it had been losing consciousness unexpectedly.
She had been rushed to the emergency room, and after an MRI scan, she had been diagnosed with an aneurysm and brainstem hemangioblastoma. She needed urgent surgery to prevent the aneurysm from bursting and to take out the tumors, but they were risky operations, and most doctors she had gone to had been turning her away. They wanted her to go overseas, but she had little time, and securing visas and making other arrangements took time.
Davis had found himself in a bind. A part of him had wished that he hadn’t approached her that way; he never would have known about her and been compelled to assist her. He had seen lights when he looked at her, and it had nothing to do with her outward appearance. Lucia had an inner light that Davis saw and knew the world needed. He wanted to do everything in his power to ensure that the sickness didn’t snuff it out.
Davis was a neurologist and couldn’t operate on her himself. In fact, he could only be an assistant in her surgery. It had led him to involve his two neurosurgeon friends, Henry and Charles. It had taken little to convince Henry to help out, but Charles had been difficult. He had claimed that his friends, Davis and Henry, were always dragging him into harebrained schemes that would surely get them into big trouble.
On one of these days, Charles had been afraid of losing his credibility as a neurosurgeon if things didn’t go well. Out of the three friends, Charles had come from the poorest background and had no connections to pull him up if he fell. His friends gave him their word that they would protect him no matter what. Henry had gone the extra mile, reminding Charles of why they had been able to come this far in their career faster than many of their peers.
In their early years of college, Henry’s mother had been diagnosed with what had been considered a terminal illness at the time. There had been a way to slow down the disease, but just as in Lucia’s case, most doctors had shied away from the procedure because it had been high risk. Sadly, Henry had lost his mother about half a decade later. Brave medical researchers had taken huge risks and brought out a treatment.
Charles had been with Henry through the devastation and remembered the promise he’d made to him back then. The promise had been that they would go to great lengths to save a patient, no matter the cost. Finally convinced, Charles teamed up with his friends, anesthesiologists, neurologists, interventional radiologists, and oncologists, to develop a comprehensive treatment plan for Lucia.
It had taken them many weeks of sleepless nights and in-depth studies to determine how best to go about the surgery. The challenges had mainly come from the hospital board, who had been skeptical since such an operation hadn’t been done at their hospital before. They didn’t want to stain their track records.
Doctors Henry, Davis, and Charles had been annoyed. ‘How can you grow without risks?’ they had argued. Dr. Mario had kept trying to pull his own strings behind the curtain to prevent them, but it hadn’t worked.
Since the patient had both an aneurysm and brainstem hemangioblastoma, the surgery was delicate. They had to place a clip at the neck of the aneurysm to stop blood flow into it and also remove the tumors at the brainstem. The brainstem is responsible for controlling vital functions such as breathing, heart rate, and swallowing. If a neurosurgeon makes a mistake during surgery, it can result in the patient becoming incapacitated or even dying. In all, six different surgical procedures were conducted on Lucia.
Although the doctors had predicted that the surgery would last a maximum of 24 hours, a day came and passed, and it continued. There were many close calls during surgery, which made the doctors intensely focused. They reacted fiercely to any distraction, including Nurse Abigail, which is why they became angry with her.
They fought waves of sleepiness, hunger, tiredness, and dizziness. At one point, Charles’s hands shook so badly that he had to rest for a few minutes and take a box of juice before continuing. They just removed the very last tumor and were suturing the area when Lucia’s blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels, and she slipped into a coma. The friends gasped; they couldn’t believe it. They had gotten through the worst parts of the surgery, or so they had thought. They were disheartened.
Suddenly, Davis shook his head. He refused to accept this defeat. ‘Now is the time. Don’t forget the plans we made. Don’t forget the secrets,’ he said, his eyes filled with fierce determination.
Just like they had planned, Davis leaned his head close to Lucia’s ear and started reminding her of all the things he wanted to do after the surgery. Henry and Charles joined in, talking about how she’d describe her wedding and the costumes she’d brag she’d make for top celebrities. The trio showed a level of care that went above and beyond what is typically expected of doctors.
These doctors knew how important this surgery was; their careers depended on it. The hospital board had warned them that if they failed, they would be asked to write a report and answer to a panel about it, with the possibility of their medical licenses being revoked. As a result, the doctors had planned to give everything it took to ensure the surgery was a success.
The MP3 player they had was whispered, and Henry quickly reached for the music player. He turned it on, and Lucia’s favorite music filled the air. It was ‘When I Get to Love You,’ she had told Davis that the song became her favorite during one of the lowest points in her life. It had taught her strength and resilience.
So, as the music played, the worried doctors hoped she would hear it and choose to be strong now that she needed it the most. What these doctors had secretly planned to do in case things went sour was a medical approach known as therapeutic communication. It’s a technique used by healthcare professionals to communicate with patients in a coma or vegetative states to stimulate the brain and potentially aid in their recovery.
This approach is based on the belief that even if patients are unable to respond, they may still be able to hear and process sounds, including voices and music. By speaking or singing to them, healthcare professionals aim to stimulate brain activity, enhance awareness, promote recovery, and provide emotional support. They had planned that if all else failed, this approach would be their final solution. Now they could only hope it would work.
‘You can do it, Lucia. You’re stronger than you think. I believe in you,’ Charles said, almost on the brink of tears. All their minds were on saving Lucia, and like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon, Lucia suddenly exhaled. Miraculously, her blood pressure picked up, and they jumped in jubilation.
‘It worked! It worked!’ they said, and the doctors quickly shared a hug. Afterward, they finished the surgery, and by the time they were done, it had been 32 hours since they had started. Exhausted, the three doctors collapsed on the ground. They were so happy that Lucia was sound asleep now and would safely recover.
Meanwhile, Abigail, Dr. Mario, and the hospital board members were speechless. Dr. Mario had shared the footage with them when things had been going wrong. Dr. Mario made all of them watch, insisting that the doctors were up to no good. But to everyone’s surprise, the doctors didn’t do anything bad. Instead, they watched with tears as a doctor sang for Lucia, held her hand, and supported her through the coma. They found themselves rejoicing too when Lucia
‘s heart rate picked up.
The doctors gained worldwide recognition and praise. Dr. Mario was put to shame, and Abigail finally learned that there are still good doctors out there. As for Lucia, she made a full recovery and remained good friends with the doctors who had given their best to save her life.
What do you think about what the doctors did? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. Thank you for watching, and see you in the next video!
