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What words can’t say — pregnant, and in quarantine, this nurse can only wait for now

This young nurse in Vadodara is asymptomatic and feels fine. Not knowing the effect of the virus on her unborn child has been harder for her to deal with.

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In these photographs, The Print’s National Photo Editor Praveen Jain captures how a nurse under quarantine conveys her thoughts and feelings through a few telling gestures. 

ThePrint’s Praveen Jain and Simrin Sirur are currently in a quarantine facility in Vadodara after they tested positive for Covid-19 on 29 April.

Vadodara: A 26-year-old woman at a quarantine facility in Vadodara spends her time watching two feature length films a day.

She has no idea how she contracted the novel coronavirus, but she’s narrowed it down to two sources: her father-in-law, who tested positive before she did, and her workplace, a local Vadodara hospital where she works as a nurse.

“I was found to be positive one week ago, after they began contact tracing my father-in-law. No one else in my family tested positive — just me and him,” she said, resting her shoulder on her door frame.

She is at Vadodara’s High Speed Rail Training Institute, which has been turned into a quarantine facility for asymptomatic Covid-19 patients, the same facility where ThePrint’s journalists are also being quarantined.

There are other patients, some pacing the corridors, others peering outside their doors to observe how others pass the time — all under the watchful eye of the doctors in masks and gloves.

The nurse rarely leaves her room. The only parts of her that slip past the door frame are her hands as she speaks animatedly. When she does decide to leave the room, it’s to visit her father-in-law down the hall. She must wear a ghoonghat every time.

“He’s still my father-in-law. Being here doesn’t change that,” she explained, laughing.

For her it’s been seven days of staying away from her three-year-old child, whom she calls whenever she can. She’s also three months pregnant with her second child, and frets for the baby.

“I’ve had no symptoms at all. With all this time on my hands, I watch films, speak to my family, but also try to read about the effects this virus can have on my child. We don’t know enough yet, and that’s the only thing that stresses me out,” she said, before retreating back into her room — hands and all.

Here the nurse is seen conveying messages with her hands, through the window in her room, to the doctor in the corridor at the quarantine facility.

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