Hand-drawn flash design of two pink popsicles, one with a bite mark, wrapped in a mint ribbon banner reading BITE ME.

Bitten popsicles with a Bite Me banner

Colour · Flash

A hand-drawn design of two pink popsicles standing side by side on wooden sticks, with a bite mark taken from the top of the right-hand one. A mint green ribbon banner wraps around the middle of both lollies and carries the words BITE ME in black serif capitals. The linework is black and fairly bold, with soft pink and mint watercolour-style shading and pink highlights on the ice, set against a plain white background.

Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the lollies at ten past three, wedged at the back of the staff freezer behind a tub of ice cream that somebody has labelled with a name that isn't theirs. They are the pink sort, the kind that tastes of very little, stuck side by side on their wooden sticks. The right-hand one has already been bitten, a neat little crescent taken from its top, and nobody on the ward will own up to it. Ruth, who has done nights for nineteen years, says the freezer has opinions about who gets fed.

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It is one of those shifts when the corridor lights hum, the lift keeps stopping on the wrong floor and the drinks machine on the second floor eats your coins without remorse. Mr Okafor in bay three wants his pillow turned for the fourth time. You stand at the open freezer door with cold air on your face and wonder how long the lollies have been waiting, and whether the bite was a hungry mistake or a dare.

At quarter past four you pull a folded card from under the freezer tray. Someone has written BITE ME across it in capitals, and below, in smaller biro, Only if you're quick. You laugh out loud and the healthcare assistant looks up from the trolley to ask what's so funny at this hour. You show her. She rolls her eyes, but she's grinning as she goes back to her obs.

You eat the bitten one first, because it's already started, and it is the best thing you have tasted all week. Then you walk the long corridor with the other one dripping down your wrist, checking drips and sleeping faces, and leave it on the desk for whoever comes on at seven. When you come back at dawn it has gone, and in its place sits a fresh card in a stranger's hand: Your turn.