Black ink tattoo of a caduceus with wings and a heartbeat line ending in an outlined heart, on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Caduceus and heartbeat line on the side

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo shows a caduceus with spread wings and a snake coiled around the staff, followed by a heartbeat trace that ends in an outlined heart. The linework is solid and even, with no shading or colour. The design sits horizontally across the skin, with the caduceus on the left and the heart on the right, against a softly lit background.

Ribs Snake Wing Heartbeat Heart Ecg line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the drips, all of you, and don't crowd the awning. The rain's come in sideways off the river, so the fish man has packed up and the cheese woman is cursing, and I've got the whole wet evening to fill. Sit on the crates and let me tell you about Mr Ambrose Keel and the boy who swept his floor.

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Keel kept an apothecary on Tanner Lane, under a brass sign of a rod with two snakes twisted round it and a pair of wings spread above, as if the thing might fly off and take the medicine with it. The boy, Tobias, came for a penny a sweep. Every Thursday Keel called him into the back room, where a grey machine sat on the bench, pushing a strip of paper out of its mouth. Keel tore off the little peaks and valleys and pinned them to a board. Look there, he'd say. Up, up, down, a little hitch, and up again. That's a heart doing its job. Nothing grander.

Tobias thought it dull, until the winter his mother came in grey-faced with a cough that would not quit. Keel sat her on the stool and clipped a wire to her wrist, and the paper began to crawl. The boy watched the pen. It went quiet for a long stretch, a flat road with no hills, and Keel put down his cup very slowly. Then the spike came, sharp and certain, and then another, and the old man laughed out loud and said, there she is.

Afterwards Tobias asked why the pen had to keep drawing. Keel took the strip down, folded it small, and put it in the boy's palm. Because it's easier to keep a line going than to start one again, he said, and went to light the stove. Tobias kept that paper in his pocket for forty years, and every time it rained he unfolded it, just to see the peaks.