Black fine-line tattoo of a heartbeat trace that forms a cross and ends in an outlined heart, with the words FAITH, HOPE and LOVE beneath, on the side of the ribs.

Heartbeat cross and heart with faith, hope, love

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink design shows a heartbeat trace that forms an upright cross on the left and rises to an outlined heart on the right. Below it, the words FAITH, HOPE and LOVE are set in small capital lettering separated by dots. The ink is solid black on warm skin, with the image cropped close to the side of the torso and a white garment at the top edge.

Ribs Cross Heartbeat Heart Faith Hope Love Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dev found the ECG strip in the back of the old physics folder, folded into quarters and gone soft at the creases. Somebody had drawn on it in biro, a little heart at the peak of the third beat, and beneath that, in Mrs Okafor's round handwriting from Year Nine, the word Pulse.

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The reunion was in the sports hall at Ashgrove, the one with the bad acoustics and the same squeaky doors. Forty people in name badges stood around trestle tables pretending not to check each other's left hands. Dev found Marnie by the squash jug, holding a paper cup as if it might go off. She had sat beside him in biology and drawn hearts on everything, and she still tapped her collarbone when she was nervous.

"You kept it," she said, nodding at the folder under his arm.

"Turns out I never threw anything away." She took the strip and smoothed it flat on the table. The trace rose and fell in its tidy mountains, and the little ink heart sat at the top of one peak like a flag. "We were so sure we'd end up doing something that mattered. Faith, hope, love. Mrs Okafor made us copy it off the board."

Dev thought of the hospital corridor eleven years back, the monitor humming above a bed he had not wanted to look at, and how the line had stayed steady long enough for him to believe in it. He did not say so. Instead he clicked his biro, drew a small upright cross beside her heart, and waited to see if she would laugh. She did. Then she ran a line beneath it, up into a heart, and said, "Fifteen minutes. After that we pretend we were never this sentimental."