Burning Building & Smoke

The ceiling drops a burning beam across you a stride from the door, and the men who drag you free are beating flames off your back and arm as they go. The doctor dresses the great raw burns in carron oil and pours laudanum with a steady hand and a grave face, burns this size kill men slow, by shock and blood poisoning, and you both know it.

• Bedridden with dressed burns across back and arm, any movement cracks them open
• A laudanum haze, hours drift and slur together
• Fever watch every night this week; infection is the killer here
• /me lies face-down on clean sheets, back swathed in oil-soaked lint, breathing in careful sips

Recovery Weeks under a doctor, dressings daily, untreated, the burns poison the blood inside a week.·Doctor, urgently

Your coat sleeve caught at the stair landing and burned to your skin before you tore it away in the street. The forearm underneath comes up in one long weeping burn, and the doctor spends an ugly quarter hour separating cloth from flesh with scissors and carbolic before the carron oil goes on.

• Arm dressed and slung, useless for 5 days
• Dressings changed daily, each one a small war
• The scar will be a glossy sleeve of its own, a permanent story
• Fever watch for 3 nights

Recovery 10 days of dressings with a doctor's care, untreated, it festers and worsens.·Doctor required

You crawled below the smoke like you were told, but the last hallway was a chimney with a floor, and you breathed what was there to breathe. You bark black sputum for days, your voice comes out a ruin, and the doctor listens long at your chest, hunting the crackle of congestion setting in.

• Wheezing and helpless coughing fits, no running, fighting, or hard riding for 5 days
• Voice a scorched whisper for 3 days
• Coughing up soot-black matter, alarming all bystanders
• /me hacks into a kerchief and folds the black stain away before anyone sees

Recovery 6 days of rest and steam inhalations under a doctor, or the lungs congest and it's pneumonia.·Doctor required

You heard the scream, turned around, and went back into a building everyone else was leaving. You came out with a person over your shoulder and both hands burned raw, palms deep-blistered from a fallen door you moved without electing to think about it. They lived. Your hands come later.

• Both hands bandaged in oil dressings, no reins, gun, or fork for 5 days
• Fed and dressed by others, humility on a schedule
• Someone in this town owes you their life and tells everyone so
• The scars across both palms are yours forever, you'll feel weather in them

Recovery 2 weeks of daily dressings with a doctor; the hands stiffen crooked without one.·Doctor required

The door was shut, and you learned why they say to feel it with the back of your hand first, you grabbed the iron latch full-palmed and it seared in a heartbeat. You got out through the window instead, gun hand blistered in the shape of your own mistake.

• Gun hand blistered across the palm, no pistol or rope work for 4 days
• Blisters weep the first 2 days; the dressing needs daily changing
• The latch shape is visible in the blister, and everyone asks

Recovery 5 days dressed and salved; 8 and an infection scare if you work it raw.·Doctor required

You made it out ahead of the worst, but your throat feels raked and your chest carries a weight all week. Every laugh becomes a coughing fit, everything smells scorched even when it isn't, and mornings begin with an ugly ritual of the kerchief.

• Coughing fits triggered by laughter, dust, or cold air for 4 days
• Hoarse, cracked voice, singing and shouting off the menu for 3 days
• /me clears their throat gravel-rough and waves off the barkeep's concern

Recovery 4 days of rest and honeyed coffee; 7 if you keep breathing other men's tobacco smoke.·Doctor required

Second floor, one exit, and it was made of glass. You went through shoulder-first and dropped onto the mercantile awning, then to the street, collecting a gashed forearm from the pane and an ankle that landed on somebody's washtub. Ugly, but you watched your room go up from the outside.

• A stitched gash on the forearm, keep it clean for 5 days
• A swollen ankle, hard limp for 3 days, no running
• Picking window glass out of your coat for a week

Recovery 5 days for stitches and ankle both with a doctor's tending, 9 hobbling ones without.·Doctor required

Something above the door let go as you ducked through, and a bucketful of embers went down your collar. You did the dance in the street, coat off, shirt half-torn, slapping at yourself, to great applause, and now a constellation of burns dots your neck and shoulders.

• A dozen coin-sized burns across neck and shoulders, collar and suspenders chafe for 4 days
• The burn spots weep and stick to your shirt the first 2 days
• /me rolls a shoulder gingerly and peels the shirt away from something, hissing

Recovery 4 days salved; 7 if the shirt keeps tearing them open.·Doctor required

The smoke took your voice as a toll on the way out. You spend the evening coughing grey and speaking in a rasp that makes everything sound like a threat, which has its uses at the card table but wears thin by supper.

• Voice a low rasp till tomorrow night
• Coughing grey into a kerchief today
• Stinging, watering eyes for a few hours

Recovery 2 days of honey, coffee, and quiet.·Doctor advised

You crossed the last room barefoot, no time for boots, and the floorboards were already cooking. Your soles come up tender and blistered at the ball of each foot, and for a few days you walk like a man crossing hot coals, because effectively you did.

• Blistered soles, a mincing, careful walk for 3 days
• Boots go on with a wince and come off with a sigh
• /me eases their weight from foot to foot at the bar rail like a heron

Recovery 3 days if you stay off long walks, 5 if you don't.·Doctor advised

You got out whole, singed at the cuffs, coughing some, but whole. What didn't get out: your other shirt, your letters, your winter coat, and the tintype you don't talk about. You stand in the street watching the roof fall in on all of it.

• Singed cuffs and a light cough for 2 days
• Reduced to the clothes on your back, everything else is ash
• You keep patting pockets for things that no longer exist

Recovery The body in 2 days; the wardrobe at the mercantile's prices.·Doctor advised

The door had swollen in the heat and refused all argument except the shoulder. It took three hits, and each one is written into the joint, a deep bone bruise that stiffens overnight into a hinge in need of oiling.

• A deep-bruised shoulder, stiff and weak for 3 days, no roping or lifting
• Sleeping on that side wakes you
• The purple map of it impresses everyone at the bathhouse

Recovery 3 days of liniment; 5 of grumbling without.·Doctor advised

You came out with your eyebrows singed to stubble, your hairline crisped at the edges, and one cheek glowing tight and red like a windburn's ambitious cousin. It looks worse than it is, which is fortunate, because it looks ridiculous.

• A red, tender face, shaving and sun both sting for 3 days
• Eyebrows absent for weeks, your expressions confuse people
• /me raises where an eyebrow used to be

Recovery 3 days for the skin; the eyebrows keep their own calendar.·Doctor advised

The smoke got into your eyes on the last flight of stairs and wrung them like dishrags. You spent the fire's finale weeping streaks through the soot on your face, and tonight every lamp wears a halo.

• Red, streaming eyes for a few hours
• Lamplight halos and squinting till morning

Recovery Overnight, with a cool wet cloth across the eyes.·No doctor needed

A lick of flame caught your sleeve at the doorway and you smothered it against your side without breaking stride. The shirt is ruined; the forearm under it is pink, tender, and yours to keep.

• A hand-span of tender pink forearm for 2 days
• One shirt, now ventilated at the elbow

Recovery 2 days of salve, or none if you're stubborn.·No doctor needed

You emerge looking like the chimney's own son, black to the collar, white about the eyes, coughing once for form's sake. Nothing on you is burned. Nothing on you is clean, either, and the hotel keeps its opinion of your sheets.

• Coughing lightly and spitting grey till bedtime
• Two baths minimum before you're presentable
• /me leaves a perfect soot handprint on everything they touch

Recovery One evening and a bar of soap.·No doctor needed

You got out early and clean, so your job became the street: counting heads, catching thrown bundles, hauling the bucket line's slack. You're unburnt and unbroken, just wrung out, with a small burn on your wrist you can't account for.

• Arms and back wrung out from bucket work till tomorrow
• One mystery burn the size of a dime on your wrist

Recovery A night's sleep and a big breakfast.·No doctor needed

The prairie fire ran at you faster than a horse, and you did the old plains trick without hesitating, dropped into a buffalo wallow, coat over your head, and let the fire roar past on both sides like a train you weren't boarding. You stand up into a black, smoking world, entirely alive.

• Coat scorched, lungs a little raw for a day
• Ash-grey from crown to boots
• You will teach this trick to greenhorns for the rest of your life

Recovery A day for the throat; the coat is past saving.·No doctor needed

Somebody at the trough shoved a dripping blanket into your arms as you turned back for the door, and you crossed the burning lobby under it like a ghost in a bedsheet, out the far side with steaming shoulders and not one burn to declare.

• Damp, steaming, and improbably unharmed
• You owe a stranger at the trough a drink you'll never get to buy
• /me lowers the steaming blanket and looks back at the doorway, grinning

Recovery None, the blanket took it all.·No doctor needed

The crowd sees it the way the dime novels write it: the doorway a sheet of flame, then a figure walking out of it, you, with the neighbor's baby in one arm and, for reasons nobody remembers, the hotel cat under the other. The frame collapses behind you on cue. Not a hair on any of the three of you is singed, and the photographer missed it, which is the only tragedy of the night.

• Untouched, and a local legend by morning
• The saloon renames a drink after you within the week
• The cat follows you around town now, which complicates your reputation
• /me sets the baby in its mother's arms and the cat on the bar, in that order

Recovery None, though you'll be buying fewer drinks than ever.·No doctor needed