The medics in the back of the US Army helicopter got down on their knees, one blowing air through a valve into the Pakistani baby's mouth, the other holding an intravenous drip in its foot.
Everyone aboard anxiously watched the green line of a heartbeat zigzag across a black screen, as the one-year-old child lay there with a tube fixed to a half-depressed syringe containing thick lime liquid.
The Blackhawk's pilot, who a month ago had been flying patrols over hostile territory in southern Afghanistan, radioed ahead to Chaklala air base at Rawalpindi, the garrison town where over 10,000 earthquake casualties have already been hospitalised. "We have a critical baby on board, we are requesting oxygen and an ambulance."
Sat just behind the pilots, Rear Admiral Michael LeFever, commander of the US disaster relief mission in Pakistan, commended them on flying lower and faster over the rugged range of hills surrounding Muzaffarabad, the ruined capital of Azad Kashmir, from Rawalpindi and neighbouring Islamabad.
LeFever saw the boy at the mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) and immediately acceded to a request to evacuate him to Rawalpindi, but only minutes after take-off, as the helicopter gathered altitude, the child's condition deteriorated.
The requested ambulance was waiting on the tarmac close to where the Blackhawk touched down, and in less than two minutes it sped off with the child, its father and medical team aboard.
"This is a replay for me. I have seen this once before since I have been out here.