Follow a Stranger

When Kate and Marc arrived they found the local priest

directing operations, his long black beard wagging furiously

as he kept the men working. He turned aside to greet them,

staring curiously at Kate, then smiling when Marc said

something in Greek to him.

“I’ve told him you know some nursing,” he told her. “He

says the injured are being taken to his house. I’ll take you

there.”

The men were working like demons, shifting the rocks

and fallen walls with every tool they could find, including

their bare hands. The rain poured down on them as they

worked, soaking through their clothes and running down

their faces.

The priest’s house was already full of crying women,

white-faced terrified children and shocked old men who sat

rocking themselves like babies in corners.

Kate took off her raincoat, rolled up her sleeves and set

to work. Marc left one of the first aid boxes with her, took

the other and shot off to the site of the disaster again.

There were already two women working with the injured,

a small middle-aged woman with a tight mouth and

snapping black eyes, who seemed very efficient, but whose

curt manner distressed the children even more than they

were already distressed. And a plump, slow woman with a

sweet smile who moved very lazily around the crowded

room. They looked at Kate, spoke in Greek, and then went

on working when she answered in English, shrugging.

Kate began to wash and bandage the arm of one weeping

woman. She comforted her, wishing she knew some Greek,

then moved on to a child who lay, with a blood-soaked dress,