Black and grey realism tattoos of a blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, syringes and a warning label on the thigh and calf.

Medical instruments and warning label on a leg

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows three photographs of a leg with tattoos of medical and household objects, including a blood pressure cuff with gauge, a stethoscope, syringes, a razor and a corkscrew. A label reading WARNING MAY BE HABIT FORMING runs diagonally across the thigh. The linework is clean and the objects are shaded in greys to give a three-dimensional look, with the composition spreading from the upper thigh down to the calf and ankle.

Realism Thigh Calf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the reunion remembers the blood pressure cuff except Dennis Pyke, who has spent twenty minutes by the sausage rolls telling everyone you once stole the first aid kit from Mr Hollis's cupboard. You let him. It is the nearest thing to a shared memory the two of you have, and it is mostly true.

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The kit lived in the chemistry prep room, behind a door with a yellow sign that read MAY BE HABIT FORMING, which Mr Hollis had pinned up to stop anyone touching the pear drops he hid in the drawer beside the stethoscope. Dennis found the key in the fire bucket. For one summer, at dinner break, you took turns with the cuff on the bike shed bench, squeezing the rubber bulb until the needle shivered, then letting it sigh back to zero while the other counted aloud as though you were saving lives. Nobody was saved. Hollis caught you in August, and his only punishment was to make you both sit in his office and finish the tin.

Now Dennis is a practice nurse in Doncaster with a waiting room full of people who trust his advice. Tonight he hands you a warm glass of white wine and asks you to take his pulse, the way you did in the bike sheds. You press two fingers to his wrist and count against the clock above the buffet. It is steady, he says, which is all he ever wanted to hear, and the old sign in your head still says what it always said: the habit was never the pears.