Broken Bottle

The jagged edge finds the great vein of your neck and the world narrows to hands, yours, theirs, anyone's, clamped hard on your throat while somebody screams for the doctor. It's pressure and cautery by lamplight, the iron's hiss, and a night nobody in that room forgets.

• Neck bound in dressings, speak in a whisper for 4 days
• Too weak from blood loss to stand long for 3 days
• A cautery burn scar on the throat, unmistakable forever
• /me speaks in a rasping whisper, one hand resting light on a bandaged throat

Recovery 2 weeks of stillness under a doctor's eye if the cautery holds; if it doesn't, minutes.·Doctor, urgently

Shards spray upward and the eye takes them, tears, blood, and slivers all at once. The doctor works by his brightest lamp with his finest forceps, drawing glass off the eye itself, and he will not promise you the sight until the bandage comes off.

• Both eyes bandaged for 3 days, moving one moves the other
• Led by the elbow everywhere, fed what you're handed
• Light stabs like a needle when the bandage lifts
• /me sits stone-still, eyes wrapped, tracking the room by boot sounds

Recovery 2 weeks under a doctor's care and shade; the sight may come back clouded, or not at all.·Doctor, urgently

The ragged glass tears along the side of your neck and misses the big vessels by a finger, the doctor measures the distance out loud, twice, like he can't believe it either. Ragged edges never close pretty; this one takes trimming, layered silk, and holding stiller than you've ever held.

• Neck stitched and dressed, no turning the head fast for 5 days
• Collars button over it wrong; everyone stares anyway
• A wide, ragged scar down the neck, impossible to mistake for a shave nick

Recovery 2 weeks with a doctor's trimming; untreated it heals wide, proud, and angry.·Doctor, urgently

You threw your forearm up and the bottle shattered against it, driving glass through your sleeve in a dozen places. The doctor spends an hour under lamplight with forceps and a basin, and every shard rings the tin like a coin you're paying one at a time.

• Forearm bandaged wrist to elbow, no gripping with it for 5 days
• A dozen small dressed cuts, each with its own opinion
• /me listens to another glass sliver ring the basin, knuckles white on the chair

Recovery 12 days if he got every shard; any he missed will fester its own way out over weeks.·Doctor required

The broken edge rakes your cheek and leaves slivers seated in the wound like seeds in a furrow. Dirty bar glass is the sleeper here, the doctor scrubs it with carbolic until you'd rather be stabbed, because festering is the alternative.

• A ragged dressed laceration across the cheek for 4 days
• Chewing on that side is off for 3 days
• A wide glass-scar, rougher and uglier than any knife's work

Recovery 10 days scrubbed and dressed; unscrubbed, bar-glass filth turns it hot and weeping inside three.·Doctor required

The bottle's shoulder catches your brow and opens it wide, with a sliver left behind in the split. The eye below swells shut in sympathy while the doctor fishes glass out of your eyebrow like a bad prospector.

• That eye swollen shut for 3 days, no depth, no aim
• Stitched brow under a crust you must not pick
• /me tilts their head back, one eye purpled shut, to see who's talking

Recovery 8 days with the shard out; with it in, the brow abscesses and you do this all again, angrier.·Doctor required

The wounds close clean enough, but the lamplight missed some of the glass, and over the next weeks your skin will hand the slivers back one at a time, each rising through a small angry fester. The frontier's slowest, pettiest haunting.

• Small hot lumps that rise, weep, and surrender a glass fleck
• Check and dress the sites daily for 7 days
• An unsettling party trick: producing glass from your own arm

Recovery The cuts heal in a week; the slivers keep their own calendar for a month.·Doctor required

The ragged edge drags across your jaw from chin to ear, tearing rather than slicing. Glass scars ugly and wide where a knife scars thin, the doctor does his best, and his best will still be the first thing strangers notice.

• Jaw dressed and stiff, soft food for 3 days
• Talking pulls the stitches; keep sentences short for 2 days
• A wide, ragged scar along the jawline, unmistakably bottle-made

Recovery 10 days stitched; toughed out, it heals in a rope you can hang a reputation on.·Doctor required

The bottle breaks over your head the way it happens in stories, and like the stories never say, the scalp bleeds like a fountain and glitters with fragments. A friend picks glass out of your hair by lamplight while you hold the rag and your temper.

• Scalp cuts hidden in blood-stiff hair for 3 days
• A skull-deep headache till tomorrow
• Finding glass in your hat brim for days
• /me tips their head forward so someone can hunt glass through their hair

Recovery 5 days once the glass is out, 8 if a missed piece festers under the hair.·Doctor advised

A wild backhand drags the broken rim across your cheek, three shallow ragged lines, like you lost an argument with a bobcat. Bloody, stinging, and mercifully free of embedded glass.

• Three parallel scabs across the cheek for 4 days
• Stings at every wind and washbasin
• Cat-scratch scars that fade to faint by autumn

Recovery 5 days, mostly spent explaining there was no bobcat.·Doctor advised

You blocked with the forearm and took a ragged cut with one stubborn shard riding in it. The shard comes out by firelight with tweezers and a steadying mouthful of the very whiskey that started this.

• Forearm wrapped for 3 days
• A sharp twinge until the shard's out, then just the ordinary hurt
• /me works tweezers into their own forearm, breath held

Recovery 5 days once the glass is out, longer and hotter if it stays.·Doctor advised

The broken edge catches your ear and tears it ragged along the rim, small territory, absurd bleeding, and a bandage that makes your hat sit crooked for a week.

• Ear bandaged for 3 days; hat rides high and wrong
• Ragged notches along the ear rim, keepsakes
• Sleeping on that side is a rude awakening

Recovery 6 days; the notches stay to be asked about.·Doctor advised

They shove you down onto the bar top where the bottle already died, and you catch yourself on a bed of broken glass. Palms and forearm come up studded shallow, a constellation of small cuts, none deep, all loud.

• Both palms picked clean and wrapped for 2 days
• Gripping anything stings for 3 days
• Tiny scattered scars across the palms, like buckshot from a merciful gun

Recovery 5 days, provided the picking was thorough.·Doctor advised

A single shard finds your forearm and seats itself shallow. One pinch of the tweezers by firelight, one bead of blood, and the whole affair is over except the flinching.

• A dot of a wound, plastered for 2 days
• You keep the sliver in a matchbox for reasons you can't explain

Recovery 2 days.·No doctor needed

Most of what's running down your face is beer; the thin scratch on your temple is the only part that's yours. You smell like the floor of the place and look like a survivor, which is half true.

• A thin scratch at the temple for 2 days
• Beer-stiff hair and collar until you find a creek

Recovery 2 days; the smell takes one good wash.·No doctor needed

You swept the broken bottle aside with the back of your hand and took a row of shallow nicks across the knuckles for it. They crack open every time you make a fist, which tonight is often.

• Nicked knuckles that reopen with every fist for 3 days
• Fine white flecks on the knuckles after, barely there

Recovery 4 days if you stop punching things.·No doctor needed

One shallow cut on the cheekbone that bleeds with all the drama of something ten times worse. By the time you've cleaned it, it's a red line the width of a horsehair, and the barkeep is more upset about the bottle.

• A dramatic evening, a trivial mark
• A thin cheek scratch gone in days
• /me dabs at a bloody cheek, checks the rag, and looks almost disappointed

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

The bottle had already broken its heart on the ceiling beam, and what reached you was spray and crumbs, a fleck-scratch on the jaw and glass dust in your collar. You shake yourself off like a wet dog and grin.

• A fleck-scratch on the jaw, gone in a day
• Glass crumbs in your collar for an itchy hour

Recovery Overnight.·No doctor needed

The swing was all foam and fury, you're drenched crown to belt in somebody's beer, and the one red line on your neck is thinner than a cat's complaint. The laundry took the worst wound in the room.

• One faint scratch on the neck for a day
• A shirt that smells like a saloon floor until washed

Recovery Overnight, plus laundry.·No doctor needed

The bottle explodes against the iron lamp bracket a hand's width from your head, and you stand there haloed in lamplight, dripping good rye, with glass glittering on your hat brim like frost, and not one cut on you. The barkeep pours you a fresh one on the house, out of respect for physics.

• Not a scratch, just rye in your hair and glory in your posture
• Glass frost on the hat brim you leave there all evening
• /me removes their hat, shakes glass dust off it like snow, and puts it back on

Recovery Nothing to recover but the smell, and you're in no hurry.·No doctor needed