It was quiet morning in Korea. In a small valley, there was a little
wooden building with a corrugated steel roof. It was an orphanage that
housed many young children who had lost their parents in the war.
Suddenly, the quiet of the morning was shattered when a mortar shell
fell and landed squarely on top of the orphanage. The roof was ripped
apart by the blast and pieces of steel roofing were blasted all through
the orphanage wounding many of the children. One little girl was hit in
the leg by the flying metal and her leg was immediately amputated just
below her knee. She was laying in the rubble of the orphanage quietly
when they found her. A tourniquet was immediately applied and a runner
was sent to the MASH hospital to fetch medical help for the children.
When the doctors an nurses arrived, they begin to triage the wounded
children. When the doctor saw the little girl, he realized that her
greatest need at the moment was blood. He immediately called for
records from the orphanage to find someone with her blood type. A nurse
who could read and speak Korean began to call out the names of all the
children with the same blood type as the little girl. After a few
minutes there was a group of wide eyed children assembled. The doctor
spoke to the group and the nurse translated, "Would one of you be
willing to give this little girl your blood?" The children looked
shocked, but no one said a word. Again the doctor pleaded, " Please will
one of you give her your blood, because if you don't, she is going to
die!" Finally a boy in the back raised his hand and the nurse laid him
down on a bed to prepare him for the taking of his blood.
When the nurse ask for his arm in order to sterilize the skin, the boy
began to whimper. "Relax", she said, "It won't hurt." When the doctor
took his arm and inserted the needle, he began to cry. "Does it hurt?",
the doctor asked. But the boy only cried louder. "I'm hurting him!",
the doctor thought and he tried to ease his pain and comfort him, but to
no avail. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, the blood was
drawn and the needle was removed. The little boy just laid and sobbed
for a few minutes.
After the blood was given to the wounded girl and her condition was
stabilized, the doctor was curious. He took the Korean speaking nurse
back over to the little boy and told the nurse to ask him, "Did it
hurt?" The boy said, "No, it did not hurt." "Then why were you
crying?", the doctor asked. "Because I was afraid of dying", the boy
said. The doctor was stunned! "Why did you think you would die?" With
tears in his eyes the boy replied, "Because I thought that in order to
save her you would have to take all of my blood!" The doctor didn't
know what to say! Then he asked, "But if you thought that you were
going to die, why did you offer to give her your blood?" With tears
streaming down his face, he said, "Because she was my friend and I loved
her!"
(
geocities.com/stauffer_james)