He was still breathing. He had not woken. She had checked him before she began the crossings and had found a pulse — strong, regular — and had moved him into the recovery position that the B.Ed emergency module had covered, which was one of the things that had come back to her in fragments. She had left him in that position. He was in it now.
"Ganesh-ji," she said. She said it with the same certainty she had used on Ritu. "Help is coming. I need you to hold on." She was not sure he could hear her. She said it anyway. "I'm going to get you out of here. The children are safe. I need you to hold on."
Getting an unconscious adult man off a bus and across a flooded road section on a mountain, alone, with a six-metre rope: she did not have the resources for this. She was five foot four and she weighed fifty-three kilos and Ganesh was considerably larger. She could not do it by herself and she knew this.
But she was not going to leave him. So she sat with him and talked to him and held his hand and waited for the ground team and told him, in the carrying voice that reached the back row, that help was on the way and he needed to hold on, and she meant it, and she said it, and that was what she had.
