Campfire Burns & Scalds

The kerosene lamp bursts as you trim the wick, throwing burning oil across your forearm and up the side of your face. Someone smothers you with a saddle blanket while you're still screaming, and the doctor works by candlelight, carbolic, carron oil, laudanum, with special, silent attention to the eye on that side, which will not open.

• Face and forearm swathed in oiled dressings, bedridden days, fever watch at night
• The right eye bandaged shut; what it will see again is not yet decided
• Laudanum sleep, thin and full of burning lamps
• /me sits propped in bed, half the face wrapped, tracking the room with one eye

Recovery Weeks of dressings under a doctor, untreated, blood poisoning takes it out of everyone's hands.·Doctor, urgently

The full pot came off the fire crooked and emptied across your thigh, and wool holds boiling coffee against skin the way a poultice holds medicine. By the time you got the trousers off, they took skin with them. The deep scald covers a hand-span, and it means weeks, not days.

• A deep-scalded thigh, dressed daily, no saddle for 5 days, then only at a walk
• Walking with a wide, careful hitch, everyone knows the story
• Fever watch the first 3 nights; a scald this deep loves to fester

Recovery 2 weeks of dressings with a doctor; longer and uglier if it festers untended.·Doctor required

You stood too near the ring and the wind pressed your shirt into the flames, three heartbeats of pure animal panic before your partner tackled you into the dirt and beat it out with a blanket. The burns stripe your back and one shoulder where the cloth clung longest.

• Striped burns across back and shoulder, no bedroll on your back, no pack straps, for 5 days
• The shirt sticks to weeping dressings; changing it is a two-man job
• You stand a superstitious distance from every fire now
• /me sleeps face-down, shirtless under a loose blanket, flinching at sparks

Recovery 10 days of salve and dressing changes with a doctor; the scars keep the stripe pattern either way.·Doctor required

Somebody left the iron heeled in the coals with the shank looking cold, and your gun hand closed around metal a breath short of glowing. The palm sears in an instant with a sound you will not forget. It brands you as sure as any steer, grip, trigger, and rope are gone from that hand for a while.

• Gun hand deep-burned across the palm, no pistol, rope, or pen for 6 days
• Dressed and salved daily; flexing cracks it open the first 3 days
• A palm scar in the shape of the shank, permanent as any brand

Recovery 10 days under a doctor's care to keep the hand supple; untreated it heals stiff and half-curled.·Doctor required

The powder charge flashed early, close enough to slap. Your eyebrows and front hair are simply gone, your face is scorched red, and a spray of unburnt grains has driven into one cheek, blue specks under the skin that the doctor says will stay, a miner's tattoo.

• Face scorched and tender, shaving and sun are out for 4 days
• Eyes ache and water in bright light for 2 days
• A permanent spatter of blue powder specks across one cheek, your story, written on you
• /me turns the scorched, speckled cheek to the lamplight when asked about it

Recovery 5 days for the burn; the blue specks are yours for life.·Doctor required

You steadied yourself against the stovepipe in the dark, and it wrote a stripe across your forearm like a hot poker taking signatures. The burn rises in a neat welted line you could measure lumber against.

• A forearm burn in a dead-straight line, dressed for 4 days
• No rolled sleeves; cloth on the welt is misery
• Everyone who sees it asks, and the true story is embarrassing

Recovery 5 days salved; 8 if you keep leaning on things in the dark.·Doctor required

The pot lid slipped and a cupful of boiling water found the back of your hand inside your glove, and the glove held it there like it was paid to. The skin comes up in blisters across every knuckle before you get the leather off.

• Back of the hand blistered across all four knuckles, no gloves, no fists for 4 days
• The blisters weep the first 2 days; the dressing sticks
• /me flexes the bandaged hand slowly, counting which knuckles forgive them

Recovery 5 days dressed with lard and lint; 8 if the blisters tear working.·Doctor required

The trivet gave and the stew pot poured its whole argument down your chest. The shirt took most of it, but a scalded patch across the breastbone blisters by nightfall, and supper, what's left of it, gets eaten standing, in silence, in someone else's shirt.

• A palm-sized scald on the chest, shirt buttons stay open over a dressing for 3 days
• Bending and reaching pull the tender skin all week
• Camp is short one supper and holds you accountable

Recovery 4 days salved; 7 if the blister breaks under a dirty shirt.·Doctor required

You grabbed the pot handle bare and dropped it with a shout, and before you could reach the water bucket, a well-meaning friend had slathered your seared palm in butter, which the doctors rail against and everyone does anyway. Now it's burned, greasy, and gathering dust.

• A blistered palm under a butter shine, awkward grip for 3 days
• The burn must be washed clean, which hurts worse than the pot did
• Watch the blister for angry redness, butter invites the rot

Recovery 3 days once it's washed and properly dressed, 6 if the butter has its way.·Doctor advised

A popping log threw a live coal neatly down your boot top, and it took a two-second eternity to get the boot off. The coal left a puckered burn the size of a half-dollar on your ankle and a smell you'd rather not discuss.

• A coin-sized ankle burn, the boot chafes it for 3 days
• A hop-and-yank boot dance witnessed by the entire camp
• /me limps on the heel of one boot, the top flapping open like a dog's ear

Recovery 3 days salved and padded.·Doctor advised

The tin cup was hotter than the coffee and the coffee was hotter than sin, and both went into your lap when the log you sat on rolled. The scald is shallow but the geography is unfortunate, and standing up quickly remains your posture of choice for a couple of days.

• A shallow scald in an undignified place, sitting is a negotiation for 2 days
• You ride standing in the stirrups, to public comment
• The camp has retired your log and named it after you

Recovery 2 days, mostly spent standing.·Doctor advised

The bacon fought back. A skillet of popping grease speckled both forearms with a dozen pinhead burns, each one trivial, all of them together a stinging, spotted misery that flares every time your sleeves brush anything.

• Both forearms speckled with small burns, stinging for 2 days
• Sleeves down and loose; cuffs are the enemy
• You cook standing further back now, like the bacon owes you money

Recovery 2 days of salve dots.·Doctor advised

You sat too close for too long, and wool smolders quiet before it announces itself. By the time you smelled it, a patch of your shin was cooked pink under the charred cloth, not deep, but insistently, naggingly there.

• A pink scorched patch on the shin, tender under the boot for 2 days
• One trouser leg wears a charred-edge hole at the shin
• /me sniffs the air, then checks their own trouser leg with weary experience

Recovery 2 days, and a patch on the trousers.·Doctor advised

You caught the pot sliding off the fire and your grip was faster than your sense. One second of hot handle, one shout, and a plunge into the water bucket, the palm glows red as a schoolhouse door but keeps its skin.

• A red, tender palm for a day, handshakes are ambushes
• You use a doubled kerchief for every pot now, theatrically

Recovery A day, with the bucket's help.·No doctor needed

A spark landed on your only good shirt and gnawed a coin-sized hole in it before you slapped it out, taking a pink nip of shoulder with it. The skin will mend by Sunday. The shirt is a philosophical question.

• A pink spot on the shoulder, tender for a day
• Your good shirt now has a chaperone-approved hole in it

Recovery A day for the shoulder; the shirt awaits needle and thread.·No doctor needed

You checked the Dutch oven the impatient way, and the lid's edge kissed three fingertips. They blister small and white, just enough to make cards, buttons, and banjo all mildly heroic undertakings for a day or two.

• Three blistered fingertips, fumbling fine work for 2 days
• You blow on everything you touch now, including cold things
• /me deals the cards gingerly, using eight fingers and considerable dignity

Recovery 2 days; the blisters do the healing themselves.·No doctor needed

The spoon came out of the stew at a rolling boil and went straight to your mouth, because you have done this a hundred times and learned nothing. The scalded lip and tongue-tip turn every hot drink into a small betrayal until tomorrow.

• A scalded lip and tongue, coffee tastes like regret till tomorrow
• You blow across your cup so long the coffee goes cold

Recovery A day, or the length of your patience.·No doctor needed

The whole pot went over and your boot caught the flood, a quart of boiling coffee soaked into good thick leather that held it off your skin just long enough. You yanked the boot and stood in one sock while the leather steamed. The foot came out pink and whole.

• One pink but unburned foot, and one coffee-cured boot
• The boot survives, smelling permanently of breakfast

Recovery None, the boot did the suffering.·No doctor needed

Your cuff caught flame at the fire ring and you had it smothered in the saddle blanket before your own heartbeat caught up, one clean motion, done a half-second after it started. Scorched cloth, whole skin, and a camp full of witnesses rethinking their opinion of you.

• Not a mark on you, just a scorched cuff edge
• The camp defers to you on all matters of fire this week
• /me folds the blanket back over the saddle like nothing happened

Recovery None, speed is its own medicine.·No doctor needed

The kerosene lamp drops off the shelf edge and bursts against the table in a sheet of flame that rolls up and over you, and past. When the camp stops shouting, you are standing in a scorch-ring with your hat brim smoking gently and your coffee still in your hand, unspilled. Men check you twice for burns and find none. The hat, worn ever after, smells faintly of the story.

• Untouched inside your own scorch mark, the ring stays visible for weeks
• The coffee never spilled, which is the detail nobody believes
• Your hat brim carries a thin char line, worn like a medal
• /me takes a slow sip from the cup that survived, brim still faintly smoking

Recovery None, though the smell of kerosene turns your head forever after.·No doctor needed