Colour tattoo of an iced coffee cup with a yellow straw and teal ice cubes, with Death Before Decaf lettering, on an upper arm.

Iced coffee cup with Death Before Decaf lettering

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a plastic iced coffee cup with a yellow straw, teal ice cubes and brown liquid splashing over the rim, with the words Death Before and Decaf in lettering around it. The cup has bold black outlines and flat fills, with soft shading in the brown coffee and grey tones in the cup. Bright pink, yellow and teal accents frame the design against the skin, which fills most of the frame.

Neo-trad Lettering Upper arm Coffee cup Splash Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift doors open on Ward 9 at ten to eight, and Sunita from days is already holding out her hand for the handover sheet as if it owes her money. You have an iced coffee in each fist, the one for yourself gone to slush at the bottom, the straw chewed flat. Nobody warns you that coffee starts tasting of toffee after the third cup, or that the ice keeps its shape longer than your patience does.

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Bay Four is quiet apart from the drip pump counting down its small beeps. Mr Okafor in bed twelve, whom the day team describes as too polite to complain, has been asking since midnight whether there is any decaf. There isn't. You know because you checked the trolley at two, at half two, and again at three, mostly because the staff room kettle has a grudge against sleep and you wanted to be sure it hadn't got the better of you.

At four you fill a clean cup from the jar of instant you keep at the back of the cupboard, the one with your name on a strip of tape. You stir it with a plastic stick and carry it down the bay with both hands. He sips, pulls a face of tremendous dignity, and says it is the worst thing he has ever tasted and he would like another, please. You tell him that is the spirit. Then you tip the last of your slush into the sink and watch the grey light come up behind the blinds over the car park, while one ice cube knocks against the bottom of the cup, once, as if it also wants to be let out.