Traditional style colour tattoo of an anatomical heart with flames, a pocket watch and a banner on the forearm.

Anatomical heart and pocket watch on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm tattoo showing an anatomical heart with flames rising above it, with a rose and green leaves below. A pocket watch with Roman numerals sits beneath the heart, and a banner with partly visible lettering runs along the bottom. The bold black outlines are filled with red, orange, yellow, green and grey shading against a plain skin tone.

Traditional Forearm Heart Flame Pocket watch Rose Leaves Banner Roman numeral Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock above the nurses' station on Ward Nine has been four minutes slow since March, and nobody has asked facilities to fix it because the night staff have quietly agreed to live by it. At ten past three the corridor smells of hand gel and scorched toast from the kitchen trolley. Mr Okafor in bay two wants his watch again. It is in a sealed bag in the office drawer, and you tell him so, gently, the way Sister taught you, for the third time tonight.

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Behind the curtain of bay four, Mrs Dunning's monitor settles into a steady climb and fall that is only tired, not failing. You chart it in biro with the cap between your teeth. She has a paperback about a lighthouse keeper open on her knees and asks whether the light ever went out. "Not on the page," you say, and she laughs, a short cough that turns into a wince. She tells you she would rather waste a night on a bad novel than lie awake doing sums about her sons. You say that sounds like sense.

At half five the sky over the car park goes the colour of weak tea. You open the lost property cupboard because the porter wants a torch and the torch is always in the wrong place. Under a bag of unclaimed slippers sits a brass pocket watch with Roman numerals, its glass cracked across the VI, its hands stopped at a quarter past four. Someone has written a name on the card in capitals you cannot quite read.

You wind it anyway. It ticks, uncertain at first, then steadily, and for a moment the whole ward seems to run on its time. You carry it down the corridor and slip it into Mr Okafor's bag with his name on the label. He will never know it was ever slow.