Black and grey photo of a small tally mark tattoo of four vertical lines and a diagonal strike on the inside of an ankle, above a laced canvas shoe.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tally mark tattoo on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a small black tally mark on the ankle, made of four upright lines crossed by a diagonal stroke. The lines are crisp and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The image is black and white, with a laced canvas shoe and dark fabric filling the frame around the ankle.

Ankle Tally marks Line Ankle Sneaker

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The corridor lights are humming at the pitch they always hum at four in the morning, and you are on your knees by the linen trolley, pulling the laces of your canvas shoes tight. Nobody on nights wears anything smart. Sister Adeyemi says they are the shoes of people who expect to be running before the end of the shift, and she is usually right.

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In the porters' cupboard, on the inside of the door, there are marks in biro that go back years. Four upright strokes with one slanted through them, over and over, until the door looks like a fence someone has walked past too many times. You started the count your first week, when the night manager told you the new maternity block would open in roughly a hundred and forty nights. You have kept it honest ever since, one mark per shift, because somebody has to know how long a thing takes.

Last Tuesday you were in bay four when Mr Pryce stopped breathing between one set of obs and the next. You did not make a mark that night. You sat with him instead, held the phone to his good ear so his son in Leeds could say the thing he had rehearsed on the drive down, and then you went back to the trolley and found your hands were shaking enough to tangle the laces.

At dawn you took the marker out and sat on the cupboard step. You drew the four strokes and the bar. Then, beneath the bar, small enough that the next porter would have to look for it, you wrote his initials and the date, stood up with your knees cracking, and went to find the tea trolley.