Anatomical heart and flowers on a forearm

I worked from the specimen on a slab of wet slate, pinning the great vessels back so the aorta stood up like a root. Foxglove grew along the south wall where he had planted it for the digitalis, its bells already loosening. I drew each stem twice, once for the paper and once for my own memory, because my master taught me that a true line is one you could walk back along in the dark. Thistle I put at the edges, since Mr Pell had always called it the weed that wins.

By evening the fern had unrolled itself across the page without my permission, and the guide lines I had ruled for the frame would not stay straight. The widow came out with a lamp and looked over my shoulder. She did not weep. She asked whether I had stippled the heart for its bruising, and I said yes, and she said good, he would want to see it dark where it had worked hardest. I packed the pens in their felt and left the plate face-up on the sill, where the frost would find it by morning and take the last wet ink from the stems.