Chapter 2: Plant response to elevated CO2 - DRUM - University of ...

Today she felt the memories of filling up syringes, diagnosing diseases
and writing out prescriptions on pale pink forms at Lilavati Hospital, fading. She
hiked up her saree and looked at her swollen feet. Were these the same feet she
walked on for hours during her hospital rounds? Examining wounds, cleaning
rectum boils, soothing burns and nerves. The constant wail of babies in the
pediatric wards, the occasional female infanticide case and the paperwork, the
police and the nights she stayed in the hospital ward ready to be called anytime,
barely sleeping a wink and she felt exhausted, just thinking of it. In fact, just a
week ago when she and Mrs. Kapur had been to a restaurant, a baby’s cry at
another table had made her jump alert. The harsh glare of the operating room
bulbs, the plain stretchers, the severe smell of antiseptic maybe, she comforted
herself, it would all fade away. She winced as she tugged the comb against a
belligerent knot.
She thought she was too young to be suffering from joint and body aches.
In fact Mrs. Mehta hadn’t even comprehended this condition in her mind, to her
own self. She of all people, a doctor herself, knew that such things happen only
to old people. Fifteen years ago she thought, she would have readily called
patients above 50 — old. Today, on her birthday, she realized with an unpleasant
shock, these classifications had become hazy and blurry. Though Mrs Mehta
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