The Injured Stranger
傷ついた見知らぬ人
On the second day, a voice was heard beneath a pile of broken wood.
Someone was still alive under the of a collapsed wooden house.
The man had been there since the first moment of the earthquake.
For almost a whole day, he had waited in the dark without any help.
Jin and two other men began to move the heavy beams away carefully.
They worked slowly, because a wrong move could bring the whole pile down.
After an hour of effort, the injured man was finally rescued from the .
His leg had been crushed, and his face was covered with dust and blood.
He was carried gently into the hall and laid on a soft blanket.
Keiko, who had once worked as a nurse, came to look at his wounds.
She had not practiced medicine for many years, but her hands still remembered.
"This man has lost a lot of blood," she said in a serious tone.
She cleaned the with boiled water that had been cooled in a cup.
Strips of cloth were torn from spare shirts and used as simple bandages.
The injured man, whose name was Daichi, opened his eyes very slowly.
He whispered that he had almost given up hope while he was .
Everyone in the hall felt that a stranger had been saved together.
Jin understood that they had done something important as a small community.
Before the quake, these people had been complete strangers to one another.
Now they had shared a rescue that none of them would ever forget.
Keiko warned that Daichi would need real medicine within a few days.
Without proper care, his crushed leg could become dangerously soon.
Jin looked at the weak man breathing slowly on the thin blanket.
He knew that time had suddenly become their most dangerous enemy of all.