I click through the other links but it’s mostly about visiting times, gifts you can and can’t bring into the hospital, and health records and data protection. They mention inpatients and outpatients, but there are no specific details about the types of mental health problems they deal with.

I text Al:

Leanne was in a mental health hospital in Scotland, just Googled it.

Seconds later my phone bleeps:

Maybe she got help for her anorexia? Why Scotland, though? Her mum lives in London.

I text back:

She’s originally Scottish, though, isn’t she? She was born there then her mum moved to London with her dad. Isaac stayed. He said he grew up in care homes and foster families. Maybe she went looking for him?

Neither of us knows what happened after we left Ekanta Yatra, although we know there was a fire. After I told the Maoists what had happened, they came back up Annapurna with me to look for Johan and Al. I was scared we’d run into someone from Ekanta Yatra but the mountain was silent and Al and Johan were where I’d left them. Al’s condition had seriously deteriorated. She was breathing so shallowly I was scared that she’d died, and when one of the Maoists picked her up, grunting as he shifted her weight into his arms, she just lay there, limp and floppy. They lifted her onto a donkey and she clung to its neck, her face pressed into its mane as it bumped and jerked its way down the mountain. They put Johan’s body on the other donkey and covered his body with a blanket.

No one said a word on the way back to the Maoists’ hut, and when we got there, an ambulance was waiting. There was no room for me in the back with Al, Johan and the paramedic, so I sat in the front with the driver, staring into the darkness as we drove through the streets of Pokhara to the hospital. I spent the rest of the night in the overcrowded waiting room, too shocked to sleep, too dazed to do anything other than stare straight in front of me.

The next morning, I was allowed into the ward to see Al. We were joined by a Pokhara policeman, who questioned us at length about what had happened the night before. We told him we were returning from a hike up to the top of the mountain with a friend we’d made there, when we were attacked by masked men who stole our backpacks and stabbed Johan. Al let me do most of the talking. The policeman wrote down a “description” of the men who’d attacked us, and said he’d be in touch if he had any further questions.