Traditional style tattoo of praying hands with an orange cigarette and a dark pipe, shown on the neck in shaded grey with teal accents.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Praying hands with cigarette and pipe

Traditional · Neck · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a pair of pressed-together praying hands with a cigarette tucked beside them and a dark pipe at the lower right. The hands are shaded in greys and black with soft highlights and bold outlines, with knuckle lines drawn on the fingers. Orange and teal wash sits behind the hands and the cigarette, against a close-up view of the skin with hair at the edge of the frame.

Traditional Realism Neck Praying hands Hand Cigarette Pipe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ward 9 after midnight belongs to the drip stands and the wall clock that runs four minutes fast. Mrs Okonedo in bed six had been asking for her cigarettes since tea, and I had been telling her since tea that the only thing she was getting was a sip of water. At two she gave up asking and started praying instead, out loud, in the flat Yorkshire voice she used for everything, her hands pressed together on the blanket as if she was trying to keep a bird from getting out.

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Her son had brought in her husband's old briar pipe in a carrier bag, the one he smoked on the allotment, and I found it in the locker with an orange lighter tucked into the stem. I should have taken it straight to the sister's office. Instead I sat on the edge of the plastic chair and turned it over in my hands while she ran through the Lord's Prayer twice, then a third time with the bits she only half remembered.

Around half three she stopped and asked whether God minded a bit of smoke. I said I had never met him, so I couldn't say. She laughed so hard the monitor alarm went off, and the healthcare assistant came running, cross, and we spent ten minutes making sure her oxygen sat right. When the ward went quiet again she had her hands folded on her chest, empty, and the pipe was back in my pocket where I had forgotten it.

At six the day staff came in with their coffees, and I handed over the notes and the pipe, unlit, wrapped in a tissue. Before I left I looked in on her one last time. She was asleep with her palms still together, as if she had only paused halfway through asking for something, and I decided that was a fair way to leave it.