"Unconscious patient first. Then I'll come back for children in groups. The landing zone—" She assessed the slope. The flat shelf was too small for a landing, and the road surface was half-underwater. "I'll hover and use the winch. Is there someone on the ground who knows winch procedure?"
"Prem Lal is on the ground. He's done six winch operations."
"Good. Tell him I'm coming in."
The winch operation for Ganesh took seven minutes. Prem and his team had gotten Ganesh onto the stretcher inside the bus — a task that had required all four of the team members plus Priya Nair, who had turned out to have a specific, useful quality of not requiring encouragement to do physically difficult things. The stretcher had come through the bus door and been rigged to the winch harness by Prem, and Devika had held the hover while her co-pilot managed the winch, and Ganesh had been brought up with the steady, controlled ascent of someone in professional hands. The entire operation had the quality of something practised many times. It was. It had been practised many times. That was exactly the point.
She took Ganesh to Rudraprayag, which was twelve minutes by helicopter — an ambulance was waiting at the pad. She had Ganesh handed over and off the helicopter in three minutes and she was back in the air and returning to the gorge.
Second lift: the injured children. Divya with the wrist fracture, the three children with head wounds that Dr. Sharma had indicated needed hospital assessment. Four children, one doctor. She took them in two runs — the doctor went with Divya and one other, then came back with Devika for the other two.
Third lift: the youngest children. The Class 6 students — nine of them. She took five and then four. The four included Asha, who was the last of the youngest to be lifted — Asha, who had been at the end of the queue by her own choice, not because she had been placed there. When Devika had seen this — a small girl, clearly one of the youngest, positioning herself at the back of the children's queue — she had asked Prem about it during the third lift, and Prem had said: "I think she thought she should let the others go first."
