Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nurse portrait in profile on an arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A woman in a white nurse's cap and blue uniform is shown in profile, with dark swept-back hair and red lips. Bold black outlines and flat colour fills define the portrait, with grey shading on the hair and cap. A large red cross sits on the uniform beside lettering on the collar, and the design is framed by the curve of the arm.

Traditional Upper arm Portrait Woman Profile

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, The boat came in on Tuesday with eleven men from a Sunderland trawler, and not one of them could tell me the name of his own ship. Matron has given me the collar ward, the one with the blue lamp over the door, and I am to keep the red cross clean, she says, because the naval men look for it from the water. I have stopped asking what that means.

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The island is smaller than the map makes it. From the north window you can take in the whole of it at a glance: the pier, the chapel with its slate roof, and the dunes where the gulls stand as if they are waiting for a bus. Sister Oakes calls every man Lad, whatever his rank, and by the second week I had begun to do the same. There is a boy from Hull called Pilling who keeps asking whether the sea has gone quiet. I tell him it is quiet most days, which is true enough when you are lying on your back with your hands bound in linen.

Last night the wind dropped and the orderly brought in a sack of post that had been stuck under the jetty for a fortnight. Among the letters was one for me in your handwriting, with the stamp upside down. You say Mother has started going to chapel again. I read it twice by the blue lamp, then folded it into the lining of my cap where the starch makes a little pocket, and I think it may stay there until the war ends.

Pilling asked this morning whether I would still be here when he could walk down to the pier. I said yes, because I have decided I will be. Tell Mother I am well and that I have buttoned my collar all the way up. The boat leaves at four, so this must go now. Your loving sister, Edie.