The dramatic scenes began to unfold as the hospital ran out of oxygen in the afternoon.
On a gloomy Saturday afternoon, the distraught staff at the Saroj Super Specialty Hospital in Delhi broke down and started praying anxiously as the lives of more than 100 patients hung by a thread amid rapidly depleting oxygen supply.
An oxygen tanker had reached the hospital after the staff spent hours running around in search of supplies and making frantic calls to the government and police.
But the tanker could not enter the area where the hospital's oxygen tank is. The problem: its larger-than-normal size. The solution: an excavator, which broke down a portion of a ramp.
The dramatic scenes began to unfold as the hospital ran out of oxygen in the afternoon and the supply from the vendor never came.
The situation was tense over fears of an impending tragedy similar to the one at the Jaipur Golden Hospital, where 20 patients died amid a shortage of oxygen.
"We really didn't know what to do," Pankaj Chawla, the owner of the hospital, said.
"This was the time we started discharging patients. We told families that we don't have oxygen and they can take their patients to some other healthcare facilities," Pankaj Chawla said.
The hospital, run by a trust, discharged 34 patients during this time. Since the rest were on ventilators, their families were asked to arrange oxygen cylinders.
"Most of the patients said, ''we will stay... it's the same situation everywhere. Let's see what happens''. Thirty-four were medically okay to go," Pankaj Chawla said.
The hospital went to the high court to get an order for urgent relief, but help still did not come immediately.
By the time the order comes and gets implemented, things were changing every minute, according to advocate Prab Sahay Kaur, who represented the hospital in the court.
The facility borrowed oxygen cylinders from various healthcare facilities, while some Delhi government officials worked in the background. Later, the government allotted a tanker to it on a sharing basis.
"The tanker came to the hospital, but it was so big that it couldn't get into the area where our LMO (liquid medical oxygen) tank is," Pankaj Chawla said.
"We started breaking down a wall and a ramp with electric jackhammers and whatever we had, but it was taking time and the tanker had to go to the Tirath Ram Shah Hospital."
Government officials told the hospital that the tanker would come back after an hour.
"That's the time everybody thought nothing can save us. All of us, my doctors, my staff started crying. We were running out of luck, too," Pankaj Chawla recalled.
The hospital staff and some police personnel frantically rushed to get some cylinders filled.
Twenty cylinders were brought to the hospital in a Delhi Transport Corporation bus. Those cylinders lasted 40 minutes and actually saved the day, he said.
"In the meanwhile, we called the mayor, fire department... brought in a JCB (excavator), which broke a portion of the wall and the ramp," Pankaj Chawla said.
The police brought the tanker back after delivering oxygen at the Tirath Ram Shah Hospital.
"It could've been another Jaipur Golden tragedy, perhaps, of a bigger size... All this time, the families were there, helping us," Pankaj Chawla said.
At present, there are over 100 patients at the hospital, the majority of them on oxygen support.
The owner thanked Prab Sahay Kaur for helping them, saying it was "mainly because of her we could achieve what we did".
Prab Sahay Kaur likened the whole incident to a horror movie.
She said the tanker, which went to another hospital, was taking time to return and all the ventilators had gone completely empty.
Therefore, each of the 53 patients had to be taken off the ventilator and manually put on BiPAP machines. Doctors were monitoring each patient, trying to control the oxygen pressure and ensure the patient is stable, she said.
In half an hour, the oxygen cylinders would have run out and cylinders provided by the Delhi government were also not enough, she said, as they literally lost out all hope.
At the last moment, she added, the tanker did come, lives were saved and a tragedy was averted.