Foot: Revolver: Straight Through

The soft lead struck the arch dead center and flattened, and what left through your sole took the keystone of your foot with it. The doctor unwinds the dressing, looks a long time at the caved instep, and says the words nobody wants: if it blackens, the foot comes off at the ankle.

• Foot splinted and elevated; no weight on it at all for 7 days, carried or crutched everywhere
• Laudanum against the grinding bone pain; drowsy, dull-eyed and short-tempered
• The arch never rebuilds true, a caved, flat-footed limp for life if you keep the foot
• /me is carried in white-faced, one boot cut away, the foot beneath the bandage the wrong shape entirely.

Recovery 7 days bedbound under a doctor's daily watch; without one, gangrene and the bonesaw.·Doctor, urgently

The ball bored through the top of your foot and cracked two of the long bones on its way to daylight through the sole. Every heartbeat throbs from ankle to toes, and the foot swells so fast the boot has to be slit from cuff to toe to free it.

• Foot splinted flat to a board; crutches only for 6 days
• Boot slit apart and unwearable; a wrapped foot in a cut-down overshoe
• Toes gone purple-black with bruise-blood by the second day
• /me swings along on crutches, one foot board-splinted and bound in yards of linen.

Recovery 6 days splinted with a doctor setting the bones, 7 and a crooked heal without.·Doctor required

Clean through, top to sole, and your boot fills like a bucket under a leak, every step squelches red out the lace holes. By the time the boot comes off it pours, and the foot beneath is white and wrinkled as a drowned man's.

• Light-headed from blood loss; sit before you fall for the first day
• Both holes packed and the foot wrapped tight; crutch for 4 days
• You leave rust-brown half-footprints for days no matter how it's bound

Recovery 5 days with a doctor packing both holes, 7 pale and staggering without.·Doctor required

The ball dragged a plug of boot leather and dirty sock wool clean through your foot, and by the next evening the holes are hot, swollen and weeping yellow. The doctor opens the channel with a probe and flushes carbolic through it until you bite clean through the stick.

• Fever and sweats the first two nights; no appetite, ugly dreams
• Channel flushed with carbolic daily for 5 days, skip one and gangrene starts its whispering
• Foot too swollen for any boot for 5 days

Recovery 5 days of daily carbolic washes; a festering week and a gangrene scare if you skip them.·Doctor required

The ball threaded your foot but kissed one of the long bones going by, and the crack of it runs like a hot wire when you toe off. Not broken through, the doctor prods, you holler, but split enough to want a splint and stillness.

• Foot strapped stiff to a sole-board; cane for 4 days
• No running, jumping or stirrup-standing for 5 days
• A deep ache that flares with every change of weather

Recovery 4 days strapped with a doctor's care, 6 hobbling if you tough it out.·Doctor required

The entry on top of your foot is a neat blue-rimmed hole; the exit through the sole is a ragged flower of meat you have to walk on. The doctor stitches it with silk and pads it thick, but every step lands square on the sewing.

• Every step presses the stitched exit, walk on the heel only for 4 days
• Dressing changed twice daily; sole padded with folded wool
• /me hobbles heel-first, toes curled up off the ground like the floor's gone hot.

Recovery 4 days heel-walking with a doctor's stitches, 6 if the sole was closed with hope and a rag.·Doctor required

The holes are clean but the foot swells like bread dough, and the boot has to come off now or never, so the knife goes down the shaft while you grip the chair. What comes out is a foot twice its size, hot to the touch, the two holes puckered and seeping.

• One boot dead, slit heel to toe; you're in a wrapped foot or a borrowed slipper for 4 days
• Foot propped higher than your heart every hour you can spare for 3 days
• /me sits with a bandaged foot up on a second chair, the murdered boot lying beside it.

Recovery 4 days elevated and wrapped under a doctor's eye, 6 hot-swollen days without.·Doctor required

The ball punched through the meat of your instep, under the cords that lift your toes, and out the arch-side without finding bone. The toes still answer, but slow and half-strength, like men called out of a warm bunk.

• Toes lift weak and slow; you catch the foot on stairs and thresholds for 4 days
• Cane on the off side for 3 days
• Instep bruised black across its whole width

Recovery 4 days wrapped with a doctor's care, 5 slow and stumbling without.·Doctor required

The ball found the gap between two of the long bones and threaded it, top to sole, breaking nothing on the way. Two neat holes, a foot full of bruise, and the queasy knowledge of how narrow that gap is.

• Deep bruising across the top of the foot; heavy limp for 3 days
• Both holes washed and packed daily for 3 days
• /me eases the foot into the stirrup like it's made of glass.

Recovery 3 days with a doctor's washing, 5 if you just wrap it and walk.·Doctor advised

The ball bored through the thick pad of your heel, mercifully behind the bone, and left through the side. Standing is bearable if the weight stays forward, but every heel-strike is a hammer on a bad tooth.

• Walk on the ball of your foot only for 3 days, heel-strikes buckle the knee
• Heel pad packed and bound; dressing changed daily
• No boots with a riding heel for 4 days, flat soles or nothing

Recovery 3 days tiptoeing with a doctor's dressing, 5 without.·Doctor advised

Clean through the outside of the foot, meat only, but it's the stirrup side, and the first time you try to mount, the iron bites the wound like it holds a grudge. Riding means the off-side stirrup and a mounting block, or a lot of undignified hopping.

• Cannot bear the stirrup on that foot for 3 days; mount from the wrong side, cussing
• Limp that worsens through the day as the foot swells in the boot
• /me mounts awkward from the off side, hopping twice before swinging over.

Recovery 3 days with a doctor's packing, 5 wrapped in a saddle-blanket strip.·Doctor advised

In the top, out the sole, and neither hole bigger than a nickel, the soft lead somehow held its shape all the way through. It bleeds honest, hurts worse, and heals as clean as a gunshot foot ever will.

• Limp for 3 days; the sole hole complains loudest on gravel
• Wash both holes with whiskey or carbolic morning and night for 3 days
• Matching puckered scars, top and sole, a bar-bet party trick forever

Recovery 3 days with carbolic care, 5 with a whiskey wash and grit.·Doctor advised

Whoever fired was close, the entry wears a collar of powder-stippled black, and the ball ran shallow through the meat of your foot and out the arch-side. The burn stings past what the hole does, and the stippling never quite washes out.

• Powder burn cleaned and greased; smarts like a brand for 2 days
• Limp for 2 days, favoring the outer edge of the foot
• A speckled gray-blue tattoo around the entry scar, permanent as ink

Recovery 3 days with a doctor's cleaning, 4 with soap and stubbornness.·Doctor advised

The ball passed between your first two toes and split the webbing like cheap seam-work, out through the sole beside the pad. Ugly to look at, quick to heal, and a story that makes everyone wince exactly once.

• Toes wedged apart with a wool pad while the split closes; 3 days
• Barefoot or loose boot only for 2 days

Recovery 3 days with a stitch or two, 4 letting it close on its own.·Doctor advised

The ball shaved the outside of your little toe, taking skin, nail-corner and dignity before burying itself in the floorboards. It's the smallest wound a man can hobble this hard over.

• Little toe bound to its neighbor for 3 days
• Boots go on slow and come off slower; you sit down for both
• /me limps with theatrical dignity over what is, truthfully, one small toe.

Recovery 3 days taped to its neighbor, doctor or no doctor.·No doctor needed

The ball clipped through the outer edge of your foot, an inch of meat and no more, in and out before the pain even organized itself. It bleeds like it wants sympathy, but the bones never heard a thing.

• Tender outer edge, you roll your weight inward and walk a little bowlegged for 2 days
• Wrapped snug under the sock; check and rewrap nightly

Recovery 2 days with a clean wrap, 3 if it's just sock and boot.·No doctor needed

The ball entered at the ball of the foot, ran shallow under the skin of the sole, and popped out at the heel-edge, a furrow, not a tunnel. You've walked on blisters that argue harder, but not many.

• Padded sole and a careful flat-footed shuffle for 2 days
• Grit and sock-lint have to be washed out nightly or it festers

Recovery 2 days padded, 3 if you keep marching on it.·No doctor needed

In the top, out the sole, and somehow through the one clean lane in a foot crowded with bones, the doctor probes twice because he doesn't believe it either. A day of limping and two small scars are the whole bill.

• Mild limp for 1 day, mostly out of respect
• Two coin-sized dressings, changed once

Recovery A day and a half, treated or not, the ball did the doctoring itself.·No doctor needed

The ball struck at a slant, tore your laces open from ankle to toe, and left only a shallow burn-groove across the top of your foot. The boot is ruined lacework; the foot barely counts as wounded.

• A stinging red groove under a light wrap for 2 days
• New laces before that boot's any use, it flaps like a fish till then

Recovery 2 days of light dressing, nothing more.·No doctor needed

You were mid-stride when the ball struck, and it buried itself in the stacked leather of your bootheel instead of you, the impact kicks your leg out and drops you flat, unhurt. You pry the flattened lead out with a knife, and from now on that heel clicks different, like the boot's keeping score.

• A bruised heel and a crooked walk for an hour, more from the fall than the shot
• The flattened ball pried from the heel makes a watch-fob nobody can top
• /me tips the boot to show the lead-plugged heel and lets the silence do the bragging.

Recovery None to speak of, the boot took the whole bill.·No doctor needed