And on the slope above the road — the slope that went up from where the road should have been to the flat shelf of rock twenty metres higher — he could see them. Children. Thirty-two of them, clustered on the flat shelf, visible in their school uniforms, the older ones standing and the younger ones sitting. One of the older ones — a tall boy — was walking among them in the steady, purposeful way of someone doing regular check-ins.
"There," Geeta said. She had already started moving faster.
"Careful on this section," he said. "The water's running across the road here."
They had ropes. They rigged a crossing — more substantial than the teacher's single-rope arrangement, a two-line system that Harish and Mohan set up in four minutes with the efficiency of people who had done it in worse conditions. Prem was already at the bus before the crossing was complete, having gone across first with one end of the rope, wading through the water that was now thigh-high on this section — deeper than the teacher's estimate, because the flood level had risen while they were walking — and climbing into the bus.
The teacher was at the driver's seat. She had Ganesh in the recovery position with a makeshift neck support she had made from a scarf and a tiffin box lid. She had his pulse rate tracked — she told Prem: "seventy-two, regular, hasn't changed significantly in the last hour." She had a piece of paper with his vitals noted at fifteen-minute intervals since eight AM. She looked up when Prem came in and the expression on her face — which had been the expression of someone sustaining a state of control over a long period of time by force of will — changed very slightly, in the way that faces changed when help arrived. Not collapse. Just the specific relaxation of someone who had been holding something very heavy and had just felt another pair of hands take part of the weight.
"Prem Lal, Disaster Response," he said.
"Priya Nair," she said. "How are the children?"
"I haven't reached them yet," he said. "Geeta and Dr. Sharma are going to the slope now. They'll be fine." He was already assessing Ganesh — checking the head injury, the pulse, the eyes. The pupils were responsive — a good sign, one of the better signs. Head injury, unconscious but stable. Possible concussion, possible internal injury that he couldn't assess here. "He needs a hospital. Helicopter will be easier than the road — can they get the bird here?"
"Base station said nine AM re-evaluation," she said. "That was an hour ago."
