Shoots of pain—that feeling which unites all living beings—tugged him back into consciousness. He tried opening his eyes but could see nothing around him. He continued to struggle instinctively for what felt like an eternity, though barely a minute had passed before the realization dawned on him. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t open his eyes. The problem was the impenetrable darkness that surrounded him.    Icy terror gripped his body. A desperate thought pulsed inside his mind like a wild bird trapped in a cage: he’d gone blind.    To go blind so abruptly, so unexpectedly . . . No emotion can compare to the fear of a suddenly blinded person: not the shock of losing a limb, not the stress of surviving a heart attack. For the first few months, most people who lose their eyesight can think of nothing but death. Suicidal thoughts whisper promises of relief.    He refused to accept it. Still weak and fighting desperately against the darkness, he tumbled back into unconsciousness.    After a while, he was awakened by weak moans. Pain still rattled through his body, and for a moment, he thought the moans were his own. This time, he didn’t struggle to look around: the memory of the darkness had rushed back, and he kept his eyes shut. But after a few minutes, he realized the moans belonged to someone else.    He made a dispirited attempt to sit up, but his body refused to cooperate. He couldn’t move a muscle, pressed to the ground by something heavy. Lulled by the singsong chant of muffled moans, his mind drifted back to recent events.    Three young men around his age crouched with their ears pressed tightly to the cracks that crisscrossed the mangled concrete and listened breathlessly for any sound of life. They’d spent the last thirty minutes on this seemingly fruitless activity. The sounds were so weak and came so far apart that it was virtually impossible to pinpoint their source with any degree of certainty.    The group leader had gone in search of an infrared scanner that could register the body heat of those trapped underneath the rubble, and failing that, he’d hoped to bring back a search and rescue dog. In the aftermath of the earthquake, dogs and infrared scanners were in great demand, and they sometimes spent half a day waiting for their turn to use the resources. In the meantime, not wanting to lose precious time, the men continued to search for signs of life using their eyes and ears, bringing the forklift around to clear away the rubble they couldn’t lift themselves.    He pulled on the reins of his disordered mind and tried moving again. He had to find the source of the moans. His attempt was answered with a new wave of searing pain, and his own moans drowned out all other sounds.