Fall Down Stairs

Your heel skids off the top step and you go down the whole flight headfirst, fetching up folded against the newel post with your chin on your chest. Your neck took some of it wrong, and nobody dares move you until the doctor comes.

• Not to be moved, carried flat on a door only when the doctor allows
• Neck braced stiff in rolled toweling; the head turns nowhere for 5 days
• Hands tingling and clumsy for 3 days, buttons defeat you
• /me lies still at the stair's foot, eyes moving where the head cannot

Recovery A week braced and flat with the doctor calling daily; unwatched, one wrong turn of the head could finish what the stairs started·Doctor, urgently

The third step from the bottom catches the back of your skull and the lamps go out. You wake with blood in your ear and a headache that has its own heartbeat.

• A thin trickle of blood from one ear, the doctor goes quiet when he sees it
• A dark room and stillness for 3 days
• Confusion and a sick stomach whenever you sit up too fast
• Someone wakes you every few hours through the night, on orders

Recovery 4 days in a dark room under a doctor's watch while the fog lifts; alone, the sleep might take you somewhere deeper·Doctor, urgently

You grab for the banister, miss, and land on the point of your shoulder, it leaves the socket entire. The doctor sits you on the floor, plants a boot in your armpit, and hauls it home with no anesthetic and less ceremony.

• The resetting was heard through two walls and will be quoted
• Arm slung tight for 4 days
• Nothing lifted above shoulder height for 5 days
• /me cradles the slung arm and flinches at the memory of the boot

Recovery 5 days slung once it's hauled home, gentle for 2 more; unset, the arm hangs dead and the joint swells past helping·Doctor required

You go sideways through the banister spindles and your forearm snaps across the rail on the way. You land in a rain of broken lathe-work with the arm bent where arms don't bend.

• Plaster of Paris to the elbow, no use of that hand for 5 days
• Splinter cuts up the arm painted stinging with carbolic
• You owe the landlord a banister and he mentions it daily

Recovery Set and plastered, 6 days before the fingers wake; unset, it knits crooked and the doctor must break it fresh·Doctor required

You take the flight on your side, and every stair edge marks a rib on the way down like a stick dragged along a picket fence. Two of them answer back with a crack.

• No lifting, hauling, or brawling for 4 days
• Laughing and coughing both punish you, avoid comedians and dust
• Sleeps propped upright in a chair because lying flat steals your wind

Recovery 4 days wrapped snug with a doctor's care, 7 stubborn ones without·Doctor required

Your boot jams between two steps and the rest of you keeps going. The knee twists a direction it never agreed to and swells hot as a stove lid by suppertime.

• A walking stick for 3 days, and you use it
• Stairs one step at a time, leading with the good leg, for 4 days
• /me takes the staircase like it's a legal negotiation, both hands on the rail

Recovery 4 days wrapped and rested, 6 if you keep trusting it too early·Doctor required

You sit down the last six steps in six separate installments, and the tailbone gives on the fourth. Chairs, saddles, and church pews are all your enemies now.

• Cannot sit flat for 4 days, perches sideways or stands at the bar
• Rises from any seat in careful stages, hissing
• Rides standing in the stirrups, to everyone's amusement

Recovery 4 days with a doctor's cushion-and-rest orders, 6 if you keep sitting on it out of pride·Doctor required

The newel post finishes what the stairs started, right at the temple. You sit at the bottom a long while, watching two of everything and answering questions slower than they're asked.

• Double vision on and off for 2 days, no shooting, no fast riding
• Sick stomach in bright light; a dim room is your friend
• A goose-egg at the temple, tender to the hat brim for 3 days

Recovery 2 quiet days with a doctor checking your eyes, 4 foggy ones without, and don't take a second knock·Doctor required

You catch the banister at full speed and your grip holds but the wrist doesn't. It saves your skull and charges for the favor, swelling hot and puffy inside the hour.

• Wrist wrapped, no gun hand for 2 days
• Can't wring a rag, twist a lid, or deal a clean hand of cards
• A deep ache that finds you every time you push up from a chair

Recovery 2 days wrapped and rested, 4 if you keep gripping things to prove a point·Doctor advised

The last step is a liar, you meet the landing early and the ankle folds under you. It bears weight, barely, and complains every stride of the walk home.

• Walk, never sprint, for 3 days
• Boot loosened over the swelling by evening
• /me favors the ankle, testing each floorboard like thin ice

Recovery 3 days wrapped and propped up, 5 if you keep pacing on it·Doctor advised

You toboggan the flight flat on your back, and each stair edge leaves its own bar of bruise from shoulder to hip. By morning you're striped like fresh-planed lumber.

• A ladder of bruises down the back for 4 days
• Sleeps face-down, swearing softly at every turn
• Flinches from chair backs, wall leans, and friendly slaps alike

Recovery 2 days of stiffness, 4 before the stripes stop announcing themselves·Doctor advised

Your face takes the fifth step and a front tooth pays the toll, splitting your lip on the way. You spit white and red onto the floorboards and count the rest with your tongue.

• A chipped front tooth, a story trophy that whistles faintly when you talk
• Lip swollen for 2 days; soup and whiskey both sting
• Grins carefully, or not at all, until the swelling goes

Recovery 2 days for the lip; the tooth is a keepsake and a conversation piece·Doctor advised

Your elbow finds a stair edge dead on the funny bone, which is no joke at all. The arm buzzes numb to the fingertips, then swells until the joint won't straighten past a card-dealer's crook.

• Arm carried at a permanent polite bend for 2 days
• Grip gone weak, drops mugs, coins, and once, memorably, a pistol
• Pins and needles down to the little finger, on and off for 2 days

Recovery 2 days of buzzing and stiffness, 4 if you keep leaning on it·Doctor advised

It's not even stairs, it's the frozen boardwalk, boots skating out from under you and your backside slamming down while your hat rolls into the street. The bruise is real; the witnesses are the worse injury.

• Sits gingerly for a day, rising like a much older soul
• The hat needs re-blocking after its escape attempt
• At least one witness who will never, ever let it go

Recovery A day of wincing, 2 for the bruise, the retellings last all winter·No doctor needed

You save yourself by riding the banister down half the flight on one palm and a forearm. The friction takes a strip of skin as fare, hot as a stove-touch.

• A raw red stripe up the forearm for 2 days
• Gripping anything stings for a day
• Wears the sleeve rolled down over it and lies about why

Recovery 2 days of smarting, then just a shiny patch to point at·No doctor needed

You catch yourself on the fourth step, the seventh, and the bottom, arriving in a heap that sounds far worse than it lands. Bruised elbows, a barked shin, and a heart going like a telegraph key.

• A barked shin that flinches from boots and dogs for 2 days
• Bruised elbows, leans on nothing for a day
• /me arrives at the bottom of the stairs in installments, then stands and bows

Recovery 2 days for the bruises to quiet down·No doctor needed

Your hat slides down over your eyes on the second step, and somehow that's the saving of you, blind, you sit down at once and slide the rest of the way sensible. The hat dies a hero, crushed flat beneath you.

• A bruised backside and bruised pride, a day apiece
• The hat needs blocking, sympathy, and possibly a funeral
• Tells everyone the hat knew what it was doing

Recovery A day of sitting careful; the hat's recovery is less certain·No doctor needed

Too loose to tense, you pour down the staircase like spilled molasses and puddle at the bottom without a mark on you. The sober onlookers are furious about the physics of it.

• Not a bruise to show, checked twice, by disbelieving hands
• The memory's hazy enough that the story improves nightly
• A stern word from the barkeep about the stairs, and the bottle

Recovery Nothing to heal but the morning's headache, which was coming anyway·No doctor needed

Two steps into the fall, your hand finds the banister and holds like it was paid to. You swing, tap a hip against the spindles, and walk down the rest of the flight like nothing happened at all.

• A faint hip bruise nobody will ever see
• Fingers ache from the death-grip for a day
• One witness, whose silence costs a drink

Recovery By tomorrow it's like it never happened, because officially, it didn't·No doctor needed

You leave the top step, tuck without meaning to, and roll the entire flight to arrive standing at the bottom, facing the room, hat still on. A drummer at the corner table starts applauding and cannot stop.

• One sore neck muscle by evening, the only receipt
• The saloon names the trick after you for a week
• /me straightens their lapels at the foot of the stairs as if that were the plan entire

Recovery Nothing to heal, the legend does all the work·No doctor needed