Arrow: Gut

The arrow took you two fingers left of the navel and sank to the fletching. When the doctor eases it free the smell tells him everything: the bowel is pierced. He opens the track wider by lamplight, swabs out what filth he can reach, and closes you with silk, layer by layer. Then he washes his hands and says it plain: the arrow is out, but peritonitis is coming or it is not, and no medicine yet made will argue with it.

• Bedridden and belly bound, no standing without two hands helping for 5 days minimum
• No solid food for 3 days, sips of broth and laudanum water only
• Fever watch every few hours for a week, any hard swelling of the belly is the alarm
• /me lies flat and gray, knees drawn up a little, both hands resting light on the silk-bound belly

Recovery If the fever passes by the seventh day you may live to a month of slow mending. If it does not, settle your affairs.·Doctor, urgently

A hunting broadhead, barbed and deep, buried in the meat of your belly wall with its point resting a finger's width from the gut itself. It cannot be pulled, so the doctor cuts a cross over it, works the barbs loose one at a time while you bite leather, and lifts it out whole. The hole he leaves is bigger than the one the arrow made, but it is clean, and clean is what keeps men alive out here.

• No riding, lifting, or bending at the waist for 6 days, the cut must knit before the muscle works
• Wound packed and dressed twice daily with carbolic wash for a week
• Belly kept wrapped tight, coughing and laughing braced with a flat hand for 5 days
• /me moves in one careful piece, a hand pressed flat over the dressing at the belly

Recovery Two weeks abed and about the house, a month before the belly takes real work again.·Doctor, urgently

The shaft passed through the slab of muscle above your hip and stopped with the head tenting the skin of your back. Rather than drag the barbs backward through you, the doctor cuts the fletching away, pushes it on through, and draws it out behind. Two wounds now, front and back, but both of them honest, and the whiskey he pours through the channel burns worse than the arrow ever did.

• Two dressings, front and back, washed with carbolic and changed morning and night for 6 days
• No twisting at the waist, mounting a horse only from a block or with a hand up for a week
• Sleeping propped on the unhurt side for 5 days
• /me turns with the whole body rather than the waist, dressings front and back pulling at the shirt

Recovery Ten days for the channel to close, three weeks before the side stops reminding you.·Doctor required

The head found the vessel that feeds the belly wall, and by the time they got you to a table your boot was filling. The doctor widened the wound, fished for the artery with steel, and tied it off with silk while a man on each side held you flat. The arrow itself did modest work. The bleeding very nearly finished what it started.

• Weak from blood loss, no work and no riding above a walk for 5 days
• Beef broth, liver, and stout ordered twice daily to build the blood back
• Any fresh red soaking through the dressing means back to the table at once
• /me stands slow and white-faced, steadying a hand on the nearest solid thing before walking on

Recovery The wound closes in ten days. The blood takes a full month to come back.·Doctor, urgently

The arrow spent itself on the tough sheet of muscle across your belly and stuck there, quivering with your breath. The doctor braces a palm against you, cuts the skin back neat around the head, and lifts the whole thing out in one piece, iron, shaft, and a plug of your shirt along with it. Six silk stitches close the door behind it.

• Six stitches low in the belly, no lifting anything heavier than a coffee pot for 5 days
• Stitches kept dry and dressed, checked for redness each evening for a week
• /me sits down in stages, one forearm laid guarding across the stitched belly

Recovery Stitches drawn in 8 days, sore to the touch for a fortnight.·Doctor required

You broke the shaft off yourself before anyone could tell you not to, which left the doctor hunting a bare iron head somewhere in the meat of your side. He probed for the better part of an hour, whiskey for you and carbolic for the wound, before the forceps rang on metal and he drew it out with a grunt. He kept the head. Says he charges extra when the patient hides the target.

• The probed wound left open a day to drain, packed with carbolic-soaked lint before closing
• No bending or hauling for 5 days while the tunneled muscle knits
• Fetch the doctor at once if the wound grows hot or the edges swell shiny
• /me carries the left side stiff, shirt hanging loose over a packed and bandaged wound

Recovery A slow ten days, the probing did more mischief than the arrow.·Doctor required

The head struck your belly at a slant, and the hard-braced muscle turned it the way a shield turns a blade. It ran sideways between the layers and stopped a full hand from where it went in. The doctor traces the lump of it with a thumb, cuts down on it well away from the entry hole, and pulls it out backward through the new door. Two small wounds and a deep bruised channel between them.

• Both cuts stitched and dressed, dressings changed daily for 6 days
• The whole belly bruised along the track, no hard laughing or quick sitting up for 4 days
• /me eases upright with a hiss held behind the teeth, one hand tracing a line across the belly

Recovery Both cuts healed in ten days, the deep bruise yellowed and gone in three weeks.·Doctor required

The head came out easy enough. What worried the doctor was what it took in with it: a coin of filthy shirt cloth and whatever the arrow had been standing in before it found you. He opened the track, scrubbed it with carbolic until you swore at him in two languages, and packed it open to heal from the bottom up. Infection is the whole fight now, and cleanliness the only weapon anybody owns.

• Wound packed open and repacked daily by steady hands for a week, no stitches until it heals clean from the bottom
• Fever watch morning and night for 6 days, chills or red streaks mean ride for the doctor
• No sweat-work or river bathing while the wound stands open, 7 days
• /me favors the belly when reaching for anything, a faint carbolic smell hanging about the shirtfront

Recovery Two weeks healing from the bottom up if it stays clean, longer if it sours.·Doctor required

The arrow met you at a shallow angle and plowed instead of punching, opening a furrow across your flank as long as your hand and deep enough to show the fat beneath. Ugly to look at, bloody as a hog killing, and honest as wounds come. The doctor stitches it in one long neat seam and tells you that you will have a scar worth lying about.

• A hand-long line of stitches on the flank, no twisting or hard riding for 4 days
• Dressing changed daily, stitches out in a week
• /me hitches the gun belt up off the bandaged flank before settling into a chair

Recovery Stitches out in 7 days, the scar there for the rest of your days.·Doctor required

It kissed you along the belly below the ribs, splitting skin the way a knife skins an apple, a long shallow burn of a wound that bled dramatic and meant little. Washed, drawn together with sticking plaster, and bound, it is more nuisance than danger, provided you keep it clean and keep your belt off it.

• Belt worn high or braces worn instead for 5 days, nothing rubbing across the graze
• Wound washed and freshly bound each morning for 4 days
• /me wears the shirt untucked over a long bound graze across the belly

Recovery Scabbed over in 4 days, a thin white line inside a month.·Doctor advised

The head struck the crest of your hipbone, gouged a divot, and went singing off into the brush. Bone is honest: it bled little but it aches like sin, and the bruise around the gouge will spread colors a county fair would envy. The doctor pads it, binds it, and tells you the bone itself is likely only scored.

• A deep ache in the left hip, no running or vaulting into the saddle for 5 days
• Padding kept tied over the hip point when riding for a week
• /me settles weight onto the right leg when standing long, the left hip padded under the trousers

Recovery The gouge scabs in a week, the bone ache fades in two.·Doctor advised

The arrow passed through the pinch of flesh at your waist, in and out, two neat holes a thumb apart and nothing that matters between them. The doctor runs a carbolic-soaked wick through the channel, which you will remember longer than the arrow itself, and plugs both ends with clean lint.

• Both holes dressed and kept dry for 5 days
• No belt cinched over the wound, braces or a loose sash instead for 4 days
• /me stands canted a touch to the right, sparing the dressed left waist

Recovery Closed in a week, tender to a poke for two.·Doctor advised

It went in above your hipbone and traveled, riding the slick top of the muscle without ever cutting down into it, until the head raised the skin a rib's length away like a mole under a lawn. The doctor nicked the far end, drew the whole arrow through and out, and irrigated the tunnel with whiskey he charged you for.

• The tunnel wound drains for 3 days, dressing changed whenever it soaks
• No stooping to lift for 3 days, the tunneled skin pulls
• /me presses a palm flat to the flank when rising, where a long tunnel wound sits bandaged

Recovery The tunnel closes end to end inside ten days.·Doctor advised

The arrow was near spent when it found you, and the head barely won through your shirt and the first of you. It hung there more by cloth than flesh, and you pulled it out yourself with less ceremony than a splinter. The hole is shallow, the worry it deserves is small, and a whiskey wash and a plaster settle the whole matter.

• A small plastered puncture low on the belly, kept clean for 3 days
• /me thumbs a small plaster on the belly through the shirt gap, unimpressed

Recovery Forgotten in 4 days, save when the plaster snags.·No doctor needed

It grazed you at the very end of its arc, laying a red stripe across your flank no deeper than a bramble scratch with delusions. It bled enough to ruin the shirt and not one drop more. Salve and a strip of linen, and the story you tell about it can be as long as you like.

• A shallow scratch across the flank, salved and covered for 3 days
• River bathing skipped for 2 days while it seals
• /me lifts the shirt hem to show off a long thin scratch across the flank

Recovery A scab by tomorrow, gone inside a week.·No doctor needed

The arrow reached you at the raggedy end of its flight and struck almost sideways, slapping your belly like a flat hand with a nail in it. There is a nick you could cover with a dime, and beneath it a bruise that will be a sunset by Thursday. You kept the arrow. It seems only fair.

• A deep belly bruise, no tightening the belt over it for 4 days
• The dime-sized nick kept clean for 2 days
• /me prods at a spreading belly bruise through the shirt, counting its colors

Recovery The bruise blooms, yellows, and is gone in a fortnight.·No doctor needed

The head sliced a finger-length line through the skin just above your waistband, shallow as a shaving cut and about as dangerous. It gaped enough to earn two stitches from anyone handy with a needle, and the worst of the whole affair is that it will itch under your belt for a week.

• Two stitches above the waistband, drawn in 5 days
• No scratching at it however it itches, 5 days
• /me hooks a thumb in the waistband, holding it clear of a small stitched cut

Recovery Stitches out in 5 days, an itch for a few days after.·Doctor advised

The arrow struck your belt buckle square and the buckle won. The head skated off the brass with a sound like a struck bell and buried itself in the dirt, leaving you a bent buckle, a bruise stamped in its shape, and the sudden need to sit down somewhere for a minute.

• A buckle-shaped bruise below the navel, the belt worn loose for 3 days
• /me turns the bent belt buckle to the light, whistling low

Recovery The bruise fades in a week. The buckle stays bent forever, as evidence.·No doctor needed

The arrow buried itself to the barbs in the bedroll slung across your back and hip, and every inch of it stopped in wool. You felt the punch of it, no more than a fist through a pillow, and rode on a good hundred yards before your heart understood what your blanket had just paid for. There is a hole in the wool and not one in you.

• Sound of body, though the bedroll now sports an arrow hole and a story
• /me pulls the arrow free of the rolled blanket and holds it up, letting that sink in

Recovery Nothing of yours to heal. The blanket wants darning.·No doctor needed

The arrow took you dead center below the ribs, and dead center below the ribs is where your hip flask rides. The head split the pewter clean through, spent every ounce of its malice on it, and dropped at your feet with the flask still stuck on it like meat on a spit. You are soaked in whiskey, unbroken in skin, and holding the finest excuse to buy a new flask a man ever owned. They will be telling this one in the bunkhouse long after you are tired of hearing it.

• A whiskey-soaked shirtfront and a faint round bruise where the flask drove in, tender for 2 days
• Obliged to tell the story to anyone who smells the whiskey and asks, indefinitely
• /me holds up a split pewter flask with an arrowhead through its heart, still dripping

Recovery The bruise fades in days. The story never will.·No doctor needed