“Good afternoon, this is Bernard Bajolet, please find me the phone number of my assistant’s wife, Jean-Pierre Biro,” he paused. “As quickly as possible.”

Debby listened intensely. She searched for something to latch onto in the surrounding sounds, but found nothing. All she could hear was the wind rubbing against the hull of the plane. It sounded like a whistle or a hum. Debby closed her eyes and felt her rib cage rise and fall heavily. She listened to her unnaturally loud breathing. Someone ran to the door and stopped. She heard Jean-Pierre shouting outside in English:

“Hurry, we’re here!”

He ran inside, out of breath, but with burning eyes. His face said, “we are saved!”

“There are people! They are coming to us!” he swallowed. “How do you feel?”

Debby closed her eyes and exhaled, her lips expressing either a smile or despair. The pain didn’t stop for a moment, but she felt joy. Now they were going to get help. Consciousness, clouded by pain, suddenly sank into euphoria.

Jean-Pierre looked out again.

“We are here!” he shouted, calling out to the people.

Debby began to listen to what was going on outside. She could hear several people approaching.

Two Nepalese military men, a tourist, an elderly man, and a girl approached what was left of the tail section of the plane. Jean-Pierre raised his hand up, examining their clothes. He strained to think what could be the reason for such a combination of civilians and military, people of different nationalities, and in the middle of the mountains, where not a hint of civilization was visible. Jean-Pierre saw that the young man was carrying a hiking backpack on his shoulders, while the others were not even wearing warm clothes. The Frenchman tried to push the thoughts away. Somewhere deep inside there was a doubt, “They can’t help.” The group came closer to Jean-Pierre, and a civilian who was older than the others stepped forward.

“Hey, what happened?” Dr Capri asked briefly in English.

“Hi, I’m Jean-Pierre Biro. I was on a Paris-Tokyo flight. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the tail of our plane fell off and we…”

“We? Who’s with you?”

“There’s a woman here who needs help. It looks like a closed leg fracture,” Jean-Pierre pointed to the ajar door of the toilet.

Dr Capri began to translate Jean-Pierre’s report into Nepali. Yulia and David moved toward the mangled part of the plane, Jean-Pierre guiding them.

David looked at the massive steel tail that was wedged between two huge blocks of rock, assessed the slope of the mountain with doubt, and shifted his eyebrows. “Some sort of mystery. Two plane crashes in an hour. What’s going on here?” He followed Jean-Pierre and couldn’t believe the man in front of him was a plane crash survivor.

Debby saw shadows outside. Strange faces peeked into the room. When Debby saw Yulia, she stopped feeling pain for a second.

“Oh!” she let out a relieved shout along with a smile.

Yulia walked in and took her hand. She stood awkwardly, half-bent, in the confined space.

“Hi,” David said, standing behind Yulia. “We’ll help you. How are you feeling?”

Debby was relieved to see Yulia and David, but instantly she was tired, and somehow she felt sleepy. She felt almost safe.

“Hi,” Debby said to both David and Yulia, and to all the people who looked through the doorway of the toilet room one by one.

She saw Jean-Pierre’s face and felt like she’d known him almost all her life.

“I’m fine, but I can’t move my leg,” Debby added.

The helicopter captain and Dr Capri tried to approach Debby. To do so, they had to push Yulia and David outside. They sat squatting near Debby’s legs, which were lying in the doorway.

“Yes, it’s a closed fracture, she needs to go to the hospital right away,” the helicopter captain said in Nepali, examining Debby’s leg.

“What can we do, the helicopter is broken, right?” looking at Debby, Dr Capri asked the captain.

“We have to get the helicopter working and take her to the nearest town with a hospital,” said the captain, “otherwise… based on the blue toes on her leg…” he paused again. “We need to try to get the helicopter up, or find a village nearby.”

“Can you get a helicopter up here?” Dr Capri asked.

“If we can take off,” said the captain as he stood up, “but it would be better to take her to the helicopter.”

They moved away from the room, making some space for Yulia and David. Jean-Pierre approached them to discuss the plan. They agreed that the girl had a closed fracture and many bruises, and they needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible.

“It’s amazing how you survived,” Dr Capri shook his head. “Surviving a plane crash.”

“Now we need to help the American girl and send rescuers to search for the plane,” concluded Jean-Pierre.

Captain Shah nodded:

“Yes, and as fast as we could.”

He put the first aid kit he had taken from the helicopter in front of him and pulled out a painkiller. He put the liquid in a syringe and went into the tail section of the plane to give Debby the injection.

Dr Capri looked around at everyone standing outside.

In the middle of the beautiful mountain landscape, standing next to the wreckage, were people who shouldn’t have been here at all. And the doctor understood that very well. He knew this country, he knew what was possible here and what was not. What he saw in front of him in no way fit into his already complicated plans for the day.

He looked at Yulia, who did not fully, but certainly understood the complexity of the whole situation better than anyone else. She knew for a fact that the helicopter would almost certainly not take off. She knew for a fact that the plane had crashed for the same reason that their helicopter. And so David’s phone went crazy for the same reason. And it all started with that signal they detected in Kathmandu. And the source of that signal is somewhere near here.

The doctor shifted his gaze to David, who emerged from the remains of the plane. He was sitting beside his backpack, opening it and taking out his goods. Captain Shah showed him to keep the girl warm. And David got the sleeping bag for that.

The doctor shifted his gaze to the Frenchman, who was standing beside him, looking questioningly straight at him, trying to figure out what was going on. The man seemed to see right through the doctor. There was doubt and disbelief on his face.

The doctor felt a gust of cold wind and saw dark clouds coming toward them from behind the mountains. They were spreading across the sky and growing larger as they swallowed the air. The sunlight began to change, as if it were sunset. A sharp gust staggered those who were standing on their feet.

“We can carry her in the sleeping bag,” David suggested.

“We need something solid,” Jean-Pierre pondered. “A stretcher.”

The captain came out of the wreckage and nodded to the doctor. Tulu-Manchi stepped inside and leaned over to Debby.

“We have a helicopter. It has everything we need to help you,” he looked at Yulia and back at Debby. “We need to get you to the hospital, and the sooner, the better.”

“Where can we find a stretcher?” David asked Jean-Pierre.

“How far is your helicopter?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“About twenty minutes from here,” answered the doctor briefly.

Jean-Pierre felt the snowflakes start to touch his face. He looked around at everyone. Yulia was wrapping Debby in the sleeping bag. David was handing her warm clothes out of his backpack. The doctor was standing next to the military, discussing something. Anger began to grow in Jean-Pierre’s chest. He was eager for action and realized that every second of delay was a risk to Debby’s life. “If the storm starts, we’re stuck here.”

Jean-Pierre walked over to the plane and looked through the doorway. He clenched his fist, looking at Debby, then shifted his gaze to the black clouds. Then paused, staring ahead of him in thoughtfulness. A sharp gust of wind hit him in the shoulder.