Wild Boar Goring

The tusk drove upward through your belly wall and hooked, and the boar shook. What it left behind is the wound every frontier doctor dreads: a gored abdomen, filth carried deep, the gut itself in question. He sutures with silk by lamplight and tells whoever brought you in that peritonitis, not the boar, will decide this, and there is no medicine yet made that argues with it.

• Bedridden, belly bound in silk sutures and bandage, no standing unaided for 4 days minimum
• Sips of water only at first; solid food is a risk the doctor will not take yet
• A rising fever watch, every hour without one is a small victory
• /me lies rigid and shallow-breathing, one hand hovering over the bound belly

Recovery Weeks under a doctor if the gut held and the fever stays away; if peritonitis sets in, there is no cure in 1899, only laudanum and goodbyes.·Doctor, urgently

The upward slash laid your inner thigh open to the bone, a hand-span from the great artery, and blood came like a kicked-over pail. Somebody's belt around your hip and a fist jammed in the wound got you to the doctor alive. He packs, ties off bleeders, and sutures deep and shallow layers both while you grind through a leather strap.

• No weight on the leg for 4 days, crutch, cane, or carried
• Blood loss leaves you white and dizzy; standing fast puts sparks in your vision for 3 days
• A packed, sutured trench in the thigh, dressings changed daily
• /me stands up too fast, goes gray, and sits right back down

Recovery A week under care while the deep layers knit; untreated, the wound reopens or festers, and either can finish the boar's work.·Doctor, urgently

The charge took your legs out and the boar ran you over twice, all bristle and hoof and fury. Ribs cracked under its weight and something deep in your side took a hoof, you piss dark that first night, which the doctor calls a bruised kidney and treats with bed, water, and a worried face.

• Strict bed rest for 2 days, then slow walking only through day 5
• Cracked ribs strapped tight, no lifting, no riding hard, shallow breaths for 5 days
• Hoof-shaped bruises across your back and side, a map of the stampede

Recovery 6 days under a doctor's watch for the kidney to settle; untreated, hard living can turn the deep bruising into something that kills quiet.·Doctor, urgently

The tusk plowed a furrow across your hip, deep, ragged, and dirty as only a boar's tusk can be, dressed in mud, mast, and rot. The wound itself will heal; the filth is the enemy. The doctor scrubs it with carbolic until you howl, leaves it partly open to drain, and makes you swear to come back daily.

• A ragged sutured furrow across the hip, no riding for 3 days
• Daily wound scrubbing that you will dread more than the boar
• Stiff-hipped gait; you mount from a fence rail like a grandmother for 5 days
• /me eases into the saddle by degrees, cursing softly the whole way up

Recovery 6 days of daily cleaning against near-certain infection; skip the doctor and the furrow festers into fever by the third day.·Doctor required

The tusk hooked your calf mid-leap and tore the muscle crosswise, a wound that gapes like a second mouth. The doctor stitches muscle to muscle and skin over that, then splints the leg straight so your own walking cannot undo his needlework.

• Leg splinted straight, a stiff, swinging limp for 4 days
• Walk, never sprint, for 5 days
• /me swings the splinted leg wide with each step, boot scraping the boards

Recovery 5 days treated with the splint doing its work, 9 without while the muscle knits crooked.·Doctor required

You never saw the charge, only the sky. The boar's skull hit you like a rolling log and put you into a stump, and three ribs went with a sound you felt more than heard. Every breath is a negotiation now, and coughing is out of the question entirely.

• Ribs strapped, no lifting, hauling, or brawling for 5 days
• Laughing, coughing, and sneezing all cost you dearly; folk notice the careful breathing
• A boot-sized bruise blooming across your chest in sunset colors

Recovery 5 days strapped and careful, 8 unstrapped and sorry.·Doctor required

You got your arm up as it came through and the tusk opened the forearm you fended with, a deep slash from wrist toward elbow that bled freely and needed a dozen silk stitches. The arm did its job: everything behind it is untouched.

• Forearm sutured and slung, no use of that arm for 3 days
• A dozen-stitch scar you will point to whenever boars come up in conversation
• /me adjusts the sling and flexes stiff fingers, testing what still answers

Recovery 4 days with clean dressings, 7 without while the slash weeps and gapes.·Doctor required

The shoulder of the charge caught you square and drove the breath clean out of you, you lay gasping like a landed fish while the boar circled. It gave you one slash across the ribs on its way past, shallow but long, before crashing back into the brush.

• A long shallow gash along the ribs, cleaned and bandaged for 3 days
• Deep-bruised diaphragm, winded by stairs and sprints for 2 days
• The particular humiliation of having been circled

Recovery 3 days treated, 5 untreated, the gash tightening at every twist.·Doctor required

The tusk hooked your boot heel as you scrambled up the rocks and wrenched your knee sideways. No blood at all, just a joint the size of a bread loaf by evening and a boar somewhere below wearing a piece of your heel like a medal.

• Swollen knee, walk, never sprint, for 3 days
• Stairs and saddles are undignified operations for 2 days
• /me tests the knee, winces, and picks the long flat way around

Recovery 3 days wrapped and rested, 5 if you keep insisting it is fine.·Doctor advised

The tusk raked across the outside of your thigh in the charge, a shallow tear the length of a knife handle that bled dramatic and means little. Whiskey, carbolic, a snug bandage, and a torn trouser leg that tells the story better than you do.

• A bandaged graze on the thigh, tender for 2 days
• Noticeable hitch in your stride for 2 days
• Trousers slashed open at the thigh until you find needle and thread

Recovery 2 days with a cleaning, 4 if the filth in it gets a head start.·Doctor advised

It did not gore you, it simply ran through you like you were a gate. You cartwheeled over its back and landed on packed earth, and now your hip and shoulder wear bruises the size of dinner plates while the boar is likely still running.

• Deep bruises on hip and shoulder, sleeping on one side only for 3 days
• Stiff first hour every morning; you unfold rather than rise
• /me rolls a shoulder gingerly, checking which parts still complain

Recovery 3 days for the worst of it; the colors take a week to finish their show.·Doctor advised

The upward slash that should have opened your belly caught your heavy coat instead, and the tusk spent its fury on wool and canvas. You take a shallow scrape across the stomach and a coat torn from hem to pocket, a receipt for the closest call of your season.

• A shallow scrape across the belly, stinging under the belt for 2 days
• A coat opened hem to pocket; wear the tear or pay the tailor
• You go quiet whenever you think about the two inches that mattered

Recovery 2 days; wash it well, a boar's tusk is filthy even secondhand.·Doctor advised

You walked between a sow and her piglets, and she educated you: a slashing pass at your calf, one squealing feint, and an escort at a dead run to the edge of her ground. The cut is shallow but honest, and the lesson is permanent even if the mark is not.

• A shallow slash on the calf, cleaned and wrapped for 2 days
• Mild limp for 1 day
• /me gives every thicket a long look before walking anywhere near it

Recovery 2 days with a wash; sows do not clean their tusks.·Doctor advised

You made the low branch with a full second to spare, which your palms and shins paid for. The boar patrolled below like a warden while you sat in the oak collecting splinters and perspective, and it kept your dropped hat as a trophy when it left.

• Scraped palms and shins from the fastest climb of your life, raw for 1 day
• One hat, trampled and disgraced, if it is even findable

Recovery A day; pick the splinters out and buy a new hat.·No doctor needed

The charge missed by a coat button. A bristled shoulder clipped your hip as it thundered past, spinning you into the dirt, and by the time you got up the boar had reconsidered the whole affair and gone. A bruise, a dusty backside, and a heartbeat that takes an hour to settle.

• A bruised hip, tender for 2 days
• /me brushes dust off their trousers and glares at the treeline

Recovery A day or two; the bruise is the whole bill.·No doctor needed

You dove over a deadfall as the boar came through and it went under you, close enough that you felt the bristle brush your boot. You landed in the brush pile, which was softer than the ground and considerably pointier. Scratches, a shirt full of twigs, an intact hide.

• A lattice of brush scratches across the forearms, itchy for 1 day
• Twigs in your shirt for hours no matter how you shake it

Recovery A day; the scratches barely earn the whiskey wash they get.·No doctor needed

You sidestepped the charge and lost your footing into a wallow, the boar's own wallow, still warm, which is the part that will haunt you. The beast pulled up, regarded you sitting in its mud like a lost duckling, and trotted off satisfied. Nothing hurt but everything filthy.

• Head-to-heel boar wallow mud; the smell rides with you until a hard bath
• /me sniffs their own shoulder, recoils, and heads straight for the river

Recovery One long bath and a change of clothes.·No doctor needed

It burst from the thicket, huffed to a stop ten feet out, and mock-charged twice with its hackles up while you stood stone-still, exactly as some old-timer once told you to. It lost interest and rooted away. You walk off without a mark, and only your knees know the truth.

• Untouched, though your knees keep the memory
• A campfire lecture you can now deliver with real authority

Recovery Nothing to heal; the swagger arrives by suppertime.·No doctor needed

The boar committed everything to the charge and you stepped off the line at the last blink. It hit the oak stump behind you with a crack like a wagon losing a wheel, sat down hard, and wove back into the brush with its bell rung. You never even dropped what you were carrying.

• Not a scratch, and you never spilled a drop
• /me steps neatly to one side, out of pure habit now

Recovery Nothing to heal; the stump fared worse.·No doctor needed

The charge scooped you clean off your feet and onto its back, and for five impossible seconds you rode a furious boar across the clearing, fists full of bristle, before it bucked you off into a blackberry bush and fled the county. Every scratch on you is from the berries. Every word of it is true, and there was a witness.

• Blackberry scratches and a shirt full of thorns, the boar itself never touched you
• Bragging rights: you rode a wild boar and lived to embellish it
• /me spreads their hands to show the span of the boar, which grows yearly

Recovery A day picking out thorns; the story needs no recovery at all.·No doctor needed