Fine line black dotted arc of small star shapes on a person's upper back, near the shoulder blade, above a black and white patterned top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotted star constellation on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo of a curved dotted line linking several star shapes, arranged like a constellation. The linework is fine and the ink is solid black with no shading. The tattoo sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with a black and white patterned top at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Dotwork Back Star Constellation Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the ward ever asked why I wanted the night shift, and I never told them it was because of the sky. From the back stairs at Northgate General you can see a slice of it above the multistorey, a few stars where the car park lamps don't reach. Sister Maureen taught me to stop hunting for whole pictures and to follow a single line instead. Start at the bright one, she used to say, then let your eye go where it wants.

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Tonight Ward Nine is quiet except for Mr Okafor's oxygen hissing and the trolley wheel that squeaks by the linen cupboard. I push the tea urn past the bays and take the long way round by the window, where a boy of about seven is sitting up with a torch and a pad of paper. His mum has gone home for clean pyjamas. He is drawing dots and joining them with a ruler, a curve running from the top of the page down towards the corner like a dropped thread.

"What's that one called?" I ask him. He frowns at the paper as if I've asked the name of his own hand. "It's the one that goes the wrong way," he says. "Nobody's found the end of it yet."

I promise to look for it on my break. At four, with the urn cold and the corridor lights dimmed to amber, I go out onto the back stairs and follow his line across the sky, one small point at a time, until the morning takes the last of them.