Black and grey realism tattoo of a stethoscope curled into a heart shape on the upper arm.

Stethoscope forming a heart on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A stethoscope, with its chest piece and earpiece, forms the outline of a heart across the upper arm. The tubing is drawn with dark outlines and soft grey shading that gives it a rounded, three-dimensional look, and the metal parts are shaded in brown-grey tones. The design is shown in close-up against a dark green fabric background.

Realism Upper arm Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The stethoscope turned up in the bottom drawer of the crash cart on Tuesday, wrapped in a tea towel that still smelled of Dr Haddow's pipe. Nobody claimed it. Matron says it goes to the lost property box until the spring clear-out, but I have been turning it over in my hands all week, listening to nothing through the bell, and thinking of him.

He came to Porthlew the year the fishing boats stopped going out past the breakwater, and he never once sat down during a shift. He listened to everyone's chest the way other men read the tide tables. Old Mrs Penhallow swore he could hear a wet cough from the car park. When the lifeboat crew came in soaked and grey, he'd have the tubing looped round his neck before the stretcher hit the floor.

The tubing had gone stiff at one end, and the earpiece was bent where he used to clamp it between his teeth while he wrote his notes. Yesterday I found a sticky label inside the case in his small square capitals: IF FOUND, RETURN TO WARD 4. ALWAYS PASS IT ON. I thought that a strange thing to write on a piece of kit, until I realised he had meant the listening, not the instrument.

So I'm keeping it in my locker for now. On Friday I borrowed it for the new girl, showed her where the heartbeat sits under the left collarbone, and watched her face go still as she heard it. She looked up at me as if I'd handed her a shell with the sea still inside. Come up at Easter and I'll let you have a turn.

Love, Jen