Traditional style tattoo of a blue inhaler with a grey banner reading Ain't easy bein' wheezy, on the calf.

Blue inhaler with banner on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A blue inhaler is shown upright with a grey ribbon banner wrapped around it, reading Ain't easy bein' wheezy in black lettering. The outlines are bold and dark, and the inhaler is shaded in several blues with soft highlights, while the banner uses grey tones. The tattoo fills the centre of a close-up photo of a lower leg against a pale background.

Traditional Calf Banner Ribbon Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gwen Ashby ran the late desk at Parkway Cars from a Portakabin behind the bus station, and on Friday nights she kept a blue puffer in the drawer beside the cash tin, the way other women kept a bottle of sherry. Nobody ever asked why. Drivers came in soaked and swearing, took it without a word, and handed it back ten minutes later looking like men again.

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The night Fraser Mackie came in grey around the mouth, she didn't wait for him to ask. She shook the inhaler, pushed it at him, and told him to breathe out first, slow, like he was blowing up a balloon for a child who'd given up on balloons. He coughed, sucked, coughed. "Ain't easy," he managed, the line from the hospital ward posters, and she said, "Bein' wheezy, I know, pet. Sit down."

Outside, the rain came sideways over the ring road and the cabs kept lining up under the sodium lamps. Fraser sat on the plastic chair until colour crept back into his lips, counting the cars through the glass. Gwen rang his sister, who was on nights at the Royal and sounded as if she'd been waiting all week to be asked.

At four, when the last fare was logged, he gave the inhaler back and she pretended not to notice the new dent in its cap. "Keep it," he said. "Next lad who comes in with a face like that." She put it back in the drawer beside the cash tin and wrote on the rota in biro: spare puffer, Friday. Don't lose.