Waiting
Introduction + Context
Plot Summary
Detailed Summary & Analysis
Themes
All Themes Grief and Loneliness Nature, Chaos, and Powerlessness Love, Care, and Suffering Gender, Class, and Hardship
Quotes
Characters
All Characters The Narrator Pete The Woman
Symbols
All Symbols Wheat Water
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Waiting

by

Cate Kennedy
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The Woman Character Analysis

The woman is the only female radiographer at the narrator’s public hospital. Unlike her male colleagues, the woman showed the narrator compassion when she couldn’t detect a heartbeat—she held the narrator’s leg, told her she’s sorry, and gave her time alone to process. Since the narrator hasn’t seen the woman at the hospital at all during her last few visits, she wonders if the woman was fired for not being efficient enough with her patients.

The Woman Quotes in Waiting

The Waiting quotes below are all either spoken by The Woman or refer to The Woman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
).
Waiting Quotes

This careful professional detachment while they’re gazing at the human map of you, the intimate, failed, faltering misstep, in ghostly black and white. White cloud coursing grainily over a black landmass, some cyclone gathering its bleary force offshore.

Related Characters: The Woman (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
Nature, Chaos, and Powerlessness Theme Icon
Gender, Class, and Hardship Theme Icon
Page Number: 198-99
Explanation and Analysis:

She moved the transducer and gazed at the screen and then her hand came out and squeezed my leg and she looked at me and said, I’m so sorry, I can’t see a heartbeat.

Her hand there for comfort. Warmth and pulse flowing between us, skin to skin.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Woman (speaker)
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
Gender, Class, and Hardship Theme Icon
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
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Waiting PDF

The Woman Quotes in Waiting

The Waiting quotes below are all either spoken by The Woman or refer to The Woman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
).
Waiting Quotes

This careful professional detachment while they’re gazing at the human map of you, the intimate, failed, faltering misstep, in ghostly black and white. White cloud coursing grainily over a black landmass, some cyclone gathering its bleary force offshore.

Related Characters: The Woman (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
Nature, Chaos, and Powerlessness Theme Icon
Gender, Class, and Hardship Theme Icon
Page Number: 198-99
Explanation and Analysis:

She moved the transducer and gazed at the screen and then her hand came out and squeezed my leg and she looked at me and said, I’m so sorry, I can’t see a heartbeat.

Her hand there for comfort. Warmth and pulse flowing between us, skin to skin.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Woman (speaker)
Grief and Loneliness Theme Icon
Gender, Class, and Hardship Theme Icon
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
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