The call was from AC Milan's club doctor to say David Beckham had injured his Achilles tendon, they would like him to see Orava, for surgery, and could he do an operation later that day?
"It wasn't so easy to get back to sleep," Orava said.
"But I'm a devout Christian, so (my wife and I) prayed ... we said it is not up to us, it's in bigger hands to see if things go fine. I don't need to get stressed, I can be confident," he told Reuters in an interview.
The phone call marked the beginning of unprecedented scenes in Finland as news of Beckham's imminent arrival spread. Crowds at the airport, crowds at the clinic in the western city of Turku, even an appearance by Beckham's celebrity wife Victoria.
"Of course one thinks about that (the gravity), but it's good I have (experience) so I could tolerate the stress," Orava said.
"There is mental stress and pressure, but you can't show it. The job needs to be done.
"My hands were not trembling."
"Maybe I thought that I had done enough damage, so it was time to repair it," he laughed.
Orava started working as a doctor in 1972, spending evenings in a sports clinic in the northern town of Oulu where he became familiar with athletes' injuries.
"We have lots of Achilles tendon problems in Scandinavia. If you think about the conditions outside, with people running in snowy, icy surfaces, conditions, they have lots of... problems. You saw a lot of those injuries."
"When I am in Madrid, they may call me from Barcelona and say 'You know, Sakari, we from Catalonia cannot come to Madrid... come to see us, we have a couple of boys who have some problems'," Orava laughed.
"Confidence has to be crea
