A Texas boss is being credited with helping to save the life of his sales manager by recommending he see a doctor after he appeared sick. The manager’s doctor determined he had a life-threatening blood infection that required immediate surgery, ABC News reports.

Mike Bell, a car dealership salesman from McKinney, Texas, underwent open-heart surgery and treatment for the infection stemming from an infected tooth that led him to tear his aorta as he coughed.

Bell, 58, went to work, even though he was sick, but his boss, Gus Rodriguez, didn't think Bell looked healthy enough to stay on the sales floor.

"My boss, the second he came up to me said, 'Mike, you look like [expletive,] you need to go to the doctor and figure out what's going on,' " said Bell.

Just hours later, he collapsed on his way to an X-ray at the hospital, and was rushed into emergency surgery.

"Without prompt intervention he would have died within a few hours," Dr. Mark Pool, cardiac surgeon with the Texas Health Physicians Group, told ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Bell has since fully recovered and is back at work.