Chest & Ribs: Buckshot

Ten feet from the muzzle the whole charge arrived as one fist and caved in the front of your chest, ribs stove, lung shredded, a crater a doctor could put his hand in. He packs it and dopes you and tells your friends to say what needs saying tonight.

• Deathbed scene: propped, gray and laudanum-quiet, waking in short spells for the first 2 days
• If breath holds, bedridden for 7 days with dressings packed into the crater morning and night
• /me surfaces from the laudanum long enough to find a friend's hand and grip it hard
• Should you live, the caved chest stays, a sunken scar plate and a wind that quits on stairs forever

Recovery 7 days at the very edge under constant doctoring, without it, you will not see morning·Doctor, urgently

Close range, but the pattern's heart missed you, its shoulder still chewed a palm-wide crater in your chest muscle and drove three pellets down between the ribs. The doctor gets two of them; the third sits by the lung and stays, a cold passenger for life.

• Packed crater wound dressed twice daily for 5 days; it heals from the bottom up
• Propped rest and no exertion for 5 days while the deep pellet's neighborhood settles
• A pellet by the lung forever, a deep pinch when you breathe hard in cold weather

Recovery 7 days of packing under a doctor, or the crater festers inside three without·Doctor, urgently

The saddle you were holding took half the pattern; the rest took you. A dozen pellets across the chest, most shallow, but two slipped between ribs and one nicked the lung's edge, you cough pink for a day while the doctor plugs and props you.

• Propped upright for 3 days; flat on your back the cough turns wet and frightening
• Pellet extractions leave a constellation of small dressed cuts across the chest for 4 days
• No riding above a walk for 4 days
• /me coughs carefully into a rag and folds it away before anyone can look

Recovery 6 days under a doctor's watch, and far worse odds fending alone·Doctor, urgently

Middling range: the spread had opened enough to spare your heart, but a dozen pellets went in deep, two of them squeaking between ribs without touching lung. The extraction runs past midnight, probe, grip, pull, drop, again, and the doctor's basin sounds like slow hail.

• A chest peppered with dressed extraction cuts, changed daily for 4 days
• Low fever the first 2 days; whiskey and broth and no visitors
• Two pellets stay, too deep, too near, and ache before every storm

Recovery 5 days of dressings with a doctor, 10 and fever's gamble without·Doctor required

An evening on the table under lamplight: nine pellets in the chest muscle, and the doctor takes them one at a time, probe, curse, grip, tink into the pan, while you work through his whiskey and your vocabulary. The tenth he cannot find, and it will introduce itself some rainy year.

• Nine small dressed wounds across the chest for 3 days
• Chest muscle too sore for hauling, roping or fistfights for 3 days
• /me counts the pellets in the pan twice and comes up one short both times

Recovery 4 days with a doctor's thorough digging, 7 and a festering pellet without·Doctor required

The pattern clumped, and four pellets landed within a coin's width of each other on one rib, cracking it and burying themselves in the bone's meat like tacks in a fencepost. The doctor pries each one from the rib while you memorize the ceiling.

• A cracked rib under a single ugly dressing; wrapped chest and no lifting for 4 days
• Coughing and laughing punish you for 4 days, brace first
• A tight cluster of pit scars on the rib line, like a brand of birdshot

Recovery 4 days wrapped with a doctor's care, 8 aching days alone·Doctor required

Every pellet that broke skin took a scrap of shirt in with it, and cloth kills slower but surer than lead. The doctor pulls pellets and threads in pairs, flushing each hole with carbolic until the whole chest froths pink, because the one scrap he misses will abscess by Sunday.

• A chest of flushed, open pellet wounds draining for 4 days
• Carbolic washes twice a day for 3 days, you smell like a hospital hallway
• No dusty work or river crossings for 4 days
• /me grits through the carbolic wash, knuckles white around the bedframe rail

Recovery 4 days of flushing with a doctor, or a lanced abscess and a hot week without·Doctor required

The spread walked upward, and the last three pellets dug in deep just below your collarbone where the big vessels run. The doctor hunts them slow and shallow-handed, sweating more than you do, and leaves the deepest one sitting where it is rather than fish beside an artery.

• Dressings at the collar for 3 days; no rifle stock to that shoulder for 4 days
• One pellet stays under the collarbone, a click of an ache when you swing an axe
• Reaching overhead pulls the wounds for 3 days

Recovery 4 days with a doctor's careful work, 7 without·Doctor required

Twenty-five yards gave the pattern room to open, and it laid a spray of pellets across your chest like a handful of thrown gravel, most just under the skin, a few a finger deep. An hour of tweezers gets the worst; the rest your body will hold or surrender in its own time.

• A speckled chest of small scabs and bruises for 4 days
• Chest too tender for wrestling or bear hugs for 3 days
• /me sits shirtless on a stool, wincing on a rhythm as the tweezers work down the chest

Recovery 3 days of soreness with a doctor's picking, 5 with your own·Doctor advised

The doctor pulls eleven pellets in a long cursing hour and then sets the tweezers down with three still in you, too deep for the trouble, he says, and no danger where they sit. Congratulations: you now ache before rain, forever, in three places.

• Eleven small dressed wounds scabbing for 3 days
• Three hard peas under the skin of your chest that never leave and forecast weather
• No heavy hauling for 3 days while the deeper cuts close

Recovery 3 days with a doctor's tweezers, 5 without, and the three keepers regardless·Doctor advised

A wide pattern at good range dusted you across the whole front, a score of shallow craters, none deeper than a fingernail bed. It looks like smallpox and stings like a wasp convention, and every single pellet has to come out anyway.

• A chest of shallow scabs in a dot pattern for 4 days
• Bathing stings mightily for 3 days; you learn brief and businesslike
• A speckling of pale dot scars that fades but never fully leaves

Recovery 3 days scabbing with a doctor's picking, 4 with a friend and a needle·Doctor advised

Your thick winter coat drank half the charge, pellets hang in the wool like ticks, and only the open V at your chest caught true lead. Five pellets in the breastbone's meat, tweezed out in a row, and a coat you will brag on more than the wound.

• Five dressed pellet holes down the chest's center for 3 days
• Tender breastbone; crossing your arms tight hurts for 2 days
• A coat full of lead you keep hanging by the door as a testimonial

Recovery 2 to 3 days with the holes dressed, 4 without·Doctor advised

You caught the rim of the pattern, a curved line of pellets from shoulder to short rib like a sickle of stings. Half broke skin, half just welted, and the doctor's work is done between one pot of coffee and the next.

• A curved line of scabs and welts across the chest for 3 days
• Sore to stretch tall or reach across yourself for 2 days

Recovery 2 days with a doctor's quick picking, 4 alone·Doctor advised

Six pellets at the pattern's dying edge sat so shallow under the skin that the doctor thumbs them out like splinters, no knife needed. Each one leaves a bead of blood and a mark like a burst blister.

• Six small scabs across the chest, gone to pink marks in a few days
• Chest stings under a shirt's rub for 2 days

Recovery 2 days to scab over, doctor or none·No doctor needed

Three pellets in the chest meat, none deeper than a pea, and camp is closer than town. A friend with a thin knife, a hot needle and steady hands digs all three by firelight while you narrate your own funeral for laughs.

• Three nicked-open pellet holes, dressed and healing for 2 days
• /me lies back on a saddle, shirt open, heckling the man digging lead out of him
• Bruised chest where the pattern slapped, fading in 3 days

Recovery 2 days with any clean dressing, 3 if you neglect it·No doctor needed

At the far edge of a shotgun's opinion, the pellets arrived tired, a spray of angry welts across the chest with only two breaking skin. It felt like running full-tilt into a hornet nest, and it looks like it too.

• A chest full of raised red welts for 2 days
• Two small scabs where skin broke, tender under a shirt for 2 days

Recovery 2 days for the welts to settle; the scabs mind themselves·No doctor needed

Spent pellets slapped the chest and slid just beneath the skin without the push to go deeper, sitting there like seeds you can roll under a thumb. Each one squeezes out through its own hole with a pinch and a curse.

• A scatter of pinched-out pellet marks scabbing for 2 days
• Sore chest to lie face-down on for 2 nights

Recovery A day or two of stinging; nothing a dressing cannot manage·No doctor needed

The pattern's edge brushed you, two pellets stuck in your coat's breast, one pinched the skin beneath into a blood blister, and the rest of the charge went off to trouble a fencepost. You shake the lead out of the wool onto your palm and pocket it.

• A single blood blister on the chest, gone in 2 days
• Two neat holes in the coat breast and a story that grows a yard a telling

Recovery 2 days for the blister; nothing else was ever hurt·No doctor needed

You were already turning when the gun spoke, and only the fringe of the spread caught you, a sting of powder-hot air and one pellet that scored a red line across your chest without settling in. The wall behind you took your portion.

• One thin scored line across the chest, scabbed by morning and gone in 3 days
• Ears ringing on that side for a few hours

Recovery A scab by morning, a faint line by week's end, no care needed·No doctor needed

Your duster was blown open wide in the wind, and the whole pattern passed through the flying skirts of it, both panels shredded like a scarecrow's Sunday best while your chest collected one lone welt. You stand there in a smoking coat, untouched, and even the man who shot you laughs.

• One pellet welt on the chest, gone in a day
• A duster full of holes you will wear like a medal until it rots
• /me spreads the ruined duster wide, daylight showing through a dozen holes, and takes a bow

Recovery Nothing to heal but a welt gone by tomorrow·No doctor needed