The moment an ambulance siren sounds, a crowd surges across the hospital premises.

Before the doors have even opened, anxious eyes are fixed on the stretcher inside. Hope and dread sit side by side on exhausted faces. Families rush forward, wondering whether the person being brought in might be the one they have been searching for.

Then the doors open.

A patient is carried out. The face is not familiar.

The crowd slowly breaks apart, only to gather again when the next ambulance arrives.

That was the scene on Thursday at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj, where the usual bustle of patients and visitors had given way to something darker. Relatives of people who disappeared after Wednesday’s devastating flood in the Bhotekoshi river wandered the hospital grounds, searching for names on lists of injured people, staring at photographs and asking police for news.

Some wept openly. Others seemed too stunned to cry.

Among them was Bijula Karki, who had come from Dolakha after losing contact with her 24-year-old son on Wednesday morning.

Again and again, she walked to the list of injured people pasted to a hospital wall, scanning the names for her son. He was not there.

At the police desk, she had left his name and telephone number. The response was simple: “Leave his name and number. If he comes here, we will let you know.”

But reassurance was little comfort to a mother waiting for news.

Every time an ambulance entered the compound, Karki rushed towards it, hoping her son was inside. She could not bring herself to cry freely, but she could not sit calmly, either.

“He had gone to get clothes. He told me he would be back soon,” she said, choking back tears. “His phone has not connected since yesterday morning.”

Since she heard about the flood, she said, her tears had hardly stopped.

By 5pm on Thursday, more than 1,000 people had registered at the police desk at the teaching hospital as relatives of people who had gone missing after the flood, according to police.

For many families, the search extended across several hospitals and beyond.

Goma Thapa, originally from Barhabise in Sindhupalchok district and now living in Swoyambhu, had been moving between hospitals since early morning in search of her 40-year-old husband.

“He only went there about 10 or 12 days ago,” she said. “At 8 in the morning yesterday, he called and said he was leaving customs and would be coming back. After that, there has been no contact.”

His name was not on the hospital’s list of injured people.

So Thapa went from the airport to Bir Hospital, and then back again, clinging to the possibility that he might turn up somewhere alive.

The flood had not only separated individuals from their families. In some cases, entire families had vanished.

Ganesh Lama, who is from Rasuwa, had spent the day at the teaching hospital waiting for news of more than a dozen relatives.

“My sisters, nephews, nieces and brother-in-law, 15 or 16 family members in all, none of them can be reached,” he said, visibly shaken. “We are desperate. We don’t know whom to tell or what to do.”

His family had divided the search among themselves. One group was at the airport, another at Bir Hospital, while Lama stayed at the teaching hospital.

“We have been trying to contact them since we heard about the flood yesterday,” he said. “There has been no news from anywhere.”

The scenes were much the same at Bir Hospital and the adjoining trauma centre, where families stood at police desks, checked photographs and waited for ambulances.

One of them was Bhotala Sadha from Sindhupalchok, who was searching for his 32-year-old brother-in-law, Raj Kumar Shrestha.

Shrestha had travelled to Tibet on Tuesday to bring back clothes for his clothing business. He stopped answering his phone on Wednesday morning.

“We have not heard from him since yesterday morning.”

Shrestha’s photograph had been posted on the walls at both Bir Hospital and the teaching hospital.

The family had split up as well. One brother waited at the airport, where bodies were expected to arrive. Sadha searched the hospitals.

“My younger brother is at the airport, waiting where the bodies are being brought,” he said. “I’m here in case they bring him here. We still have no idea where he is.”

His search was not over.

“Now I’m going to Kathmandu Medical College. I’ll put his photograph there too and keep looking.”