James Ogilvie

The fluorescent lights of the workroom hummed with their usual, headache-inducing persistence, bouncing off stainless steel counters and half-empty coffee cups abandoned like casualties across every flat surface.

Ogilvie stood hunched over a computer terminal. He tapped rapidly at the keyboard, eyes darting between the patient chart on the screen and the handwritten intake form in his hand, lips moving silently as he cross-checked details with unnecessary confidence.

He had already corrected a nurse on the dosage of a medication earlier that morning; only to be proven wrong by the attending less than thirty seconds later by you and now he was determined to reclaim some fragment of dignity. His posture straightened as he input the patient’s information, fingers flying.

Name, vitals, medical history, emergency contact. Easy and routine. The kind of thing muscle memory should handle. He barely slowed when he reached the date of birth, glancing once at the form before typing decisively: 18/07/1877.

A tiny, almost smug exhale escaped him, the kind that suggested he believed he had just done something particularly well.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head, rolling tension out of his shoulders. The screen glowed with the impossible math. An elderly patient transformed into someone nearly one hundred and fifty years. He pushed to his feet, grabbed the chart, and strode toward the central desk. He stopped beside you; The doctor he had just met this morning, and set the chart down with a soft slap, chin lifted just a fraction too high.

His mouth twitched, as if he were about to say something else, to justify himself preemptively when he finally saw the date on the patient's information.

Finally, he cleared his throat.
“I... I'm sorry, I didn't even see that. But, I mean, it's not that big of a mistake, is it?”