Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a hand making a split-finger gesture, framed by flowers and leaves, on the inner forearm.

Split-finger hand with flowers on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an open hand making a split-finger gesture, with the middle and ring fingers parted, set in the centre of the design. Flowers with leaves and buds curl around the base of the hand and up both sides. Bold outlines define the forms, and stippled dotwork fills the shading on the hand and petals, all in black ink on pale skin.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Hand Flower Leaves Bud

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit still, the lot of you, and don't go pressing that buzzer till I've finished, because Ward Nine has heard this one only twice and both times somebody cried. There was a porter at St Aldred's called Tomas Ibarra, who could not hold a tune and would not hold a bedpan, and who on nights like this one walked the long corridor with his right hand raised and two fingers parted, like a man taking an oath he had not quite decided to keep.

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The patient in bay four was a retired signalman named Darrow who had lost his words in a stroke but not his hands. Each night when Tomas passed the glass panel, Darrow lifted his own hand and made the same split shape, and the two of them would hold it there a moment, saying nothing at all. Sister Agnes Coyle thought it was a kind of blessing and said so to anyone who would listen. She grew sweet peas in a tin bath by the bin store and put the buds in a jam jar on the nurses' desk, and she swore they opened faster when Tomas was on.

The night Darrow died, the monitor went flat a little after three. Tomas came in with his mop bucket, saw the old man's hand lying on the blanket with two fingers still apart, and did the only thing he could think of. He raised his own hand and held it there until the light in the corridor flickered, and then he went to fetch the sister. When they came back, the sweet peas in the jar had come out in the warm from the radiator, every one of them, pale purple and open as a question.

So that's why we don't say goodnight on this ward. We lift two fingers, and we wait a while before we turn the lights up, and we mean the other thing by it.