Colour botanical tattoo of rosemary, olive-like berries and eucalyptus leaves tied with string, running across the upper arm.

Herb sprigs and eucalyptus on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A bundle of herbs is tattooed across the upper arm, with rosemary-like sprigs, round berries, and eucalyptus leaves tied at the base with a looping string. The outlines are dark and even, and the leaves are filled with layered greens and soft grey shading to give them depth. The design sweeps diagonally from the lower left toward the top right, with a blurred background and a plain black top at the right edge.

Botanical Upper arm Herb Berry Leaves Sprig String

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nights on Ward 7 smelled of antiseptic and, since Tuesday, of rosemary. Dorothy Okafor had brought the bundle in tied with garden string and asked Nadia to keep it somewhere the night sister wouldn't throw it out. Nadia had put it on the windowsill above the sluice, where the blinds never quite met and the car park lights laid stripes across the lino.

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Mr Pell in bed four could manage little more than sips of water, but at three each morning he asked for the herbs to be held under his nose. Nadia lifted the bundle down, rubbed a sprig between her gloved fingers and held it there while he breathed. The eucalyptus had gone papery at the edges. The little round berries had dried to hard grey pebbles that rattled whenever the trolley wheels crossed the threshold.

Last night he didn't ask. At half past four the sky over the multistorey turned the colour of dishwater, and the first blackbird started up somewhere near the bins. Nadia stood at the sill with the bundle in her hands, the stalks cool and sharp, and noticed how Dorothy had knotted the string so the loop sat just above the base, neat and sure.

When the day nurse came on, she found the herbs back on the sill with the string retied and tugged tight. Propped against the glass was a note in Nadia's square handwriting: He asked for it at three. He was still asking at four. Leave it where the light can reach it.