The first ambulance waited for a delivery van to clear the bridge.
Its driver sounded the horn once, then stopped. A traffic worker on the far side raised a hand to hold the next vehicles. The van crossed slowly, rear suspension low with ordinary supplies for a district whose morning had not yet become an evacuation.
Mira watched it reach the other bank and felt a memory she did not trust press against the present view.
In the scene she remembered, the bridge had still been standing after the people beneath it died. Here, a hospital porter leaned into the ambulance window to confirm the receiving ward. Laundry moved through an open service door. A woman argued with a clerk about whether a relative’s chair could travel in the patient vehicle. The bridge served life before it served any threat.
Kellan asked the works supervisor where they could unload without blocking the ambulance turn. The supervisor pointed to the checked lay-by. They moved there, leaving the public approach clear.
Ossa assembled her section beside a wall out of the traffic lane. Bram went to the hospital command point with their arrival record. He returned with the local defense coordinator, who identified the positions and asked Ossa to repeat the command arrangement. She did, naming her own authority over the section and the coordinator’s control of the mission.
