Rescued

When they finally let him shower, his snot was black and he couldn’t scrub out the dirty lines indented into his forearms.
He had been trapped under a collapsed building in a position he could not remember getting himself into. A concrete rafter had pinned him onto a painful jumble of cracked wood and brick, and the only we he could keep it from crushing him was by keeping his aching forearms braced against it. For hours he heard nothing and wondered detachedly why he didn’t release the pressure. Even when he heard voices he wasn’t sure he could continue.