Memory and the Past Quotes in Cutting for Stone

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #10

She was mourning […] the passage of the years. She'd come to Addis Ababa from England after getting restless teaching in a convent school and running the student infirmary; she'd accepted a post with Sudan Interior Mission to work in Harrar, Ethiopia. In Addis, she found her orders were canceled because the Italians had attacked, and so she had simply attached herself to a small hospital all but abandoned by the American Protestants. (2.12.48)

Matron, like Stone on his way out of the hospital, is very conscious of the way the past is building up behind her, pressing in on her and stealing her attention from the present. It must be strange to look back on events that, at the time, couldn't have the weight they do now that they are in the past.