58-year-old Mike Bell works at a car dealership in McKinney, Texas, just north of Dallas. And he wasn’t feeling great last April, but decided to power through it and go to work anyway. Luckily, he has a pretty great boss.
The owner of the dealership is a guy named Gus Rodriguez. And when he saw how sick Mike was, he told him he HAD to take a sick day and see a doctor.
So Mike did. Then while he was at a hospital getting an X-ray a few hours later, he COLLAPSED.
It turned out he had an infected tooth, and the infection had spread to his blood. Then when he coughed, he tore his AORTA, and needed open-heart surgery. And his doctor says that if he hadn’t come in, he would have died within HOURS.
He ended up in the hospital for two weeks, and couldn’t work for the next few months. But he says Gus told him he wasn’t allowed to come back until he was fully recovered, and also made sure he could keep paying his bills while he was out.
(Check out their photos here.)
