She called the school. The number on the school's website rang engaged. She tried three times. Engaged each time. She tried the district education office number — also on the website — and after seven rings a young man answered who told her in the specific cadence of someone who was receiving many calls of the same kind that the school was aware of the weather situation and parents were advised to remain calm and that the school bus had departed before the alert was issued and that the transport coordinator was in contact with the driver. He said the last part with the smoothness of someone who was saying what they had been told to say, and Sunita, who had been a legal secretary for twelve years and could identify a managed response at twenty paces, knew immediately that the transport coordinator was not in contact with the driver. If the coordinator were in contact with the driver, the coordinator would be the one speaking to parents, not a young man reading from a script.
She went and got her husband Rohan from the study, where he had been working since seven AM. She showed him the news alert. She told him what the school office had said. She watched his face do the thing that faces did when they were processing information that required a calm response while the feeling underneath was not calm.
"Call the Rudraprayag Disaster Management office," she said. "That's the district body — they'll have information about road conditions."
"What's the number?"
"I'll find it." She was already searching. She was doing the thing she always did when she needed to not feel the fear — she was finding the next useful thing and doing it. The next useful thing was finding the number. Then it would be calling the number. Then it would be whatever was after that. One useful thing at a time, because one useful thing at a time was how you moved through a situation that was not yet known, that might be fine, that you had to treat as fine until it was confirmed otherwise.
She found the number. She called it. She got a busy signal. She called again. Busy signal.
