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,