The empty stretcher stopped halfway around the corner.
Kellan felt the head-end handle touch the projecting panel before the carrier beside the outer wall understood why they could not advance. He called stop. The woman froze with one foot still on sound paving, her next step aimed toward the weak edge Sera had marked.
“Back onto the landing,” he said. “Same positions. Don’t twist it.”
They reversed the stretcher without anybody climbing over the outer wall or leaning across it. On the wider landing, the local volunteer lowered her end and looked at the turn.
“It fits on the map.”
“It doesn’t fit like that,” Kellan answered.
Sera stood beside the inner wall with her notebook. She had walked the route from both ends and refused to call it ready before this trial. Now the reason sat in their hands: a stretcher’s narrow body was not the whole space required to carry it. Hands, handles and feet had to change direction together.
The projecting panel reduced the inner turn. The thin outer wall made the apparent spare space unusable. Under a patient’s weight, the carrier would have had less freedom to correct a mistake and more reason to hurry through it.
