Gut: Rifle: Lodged Deep

The round tumbled off your hip bone and plowed upward through the bowel before lodging somewhere against the spine, where no frontier knife dares follow. The doctor's probe stops, his face stops with it, and the talk turns from digging to laudanum and who should be sent for.

• Belly board-hard and swelling; fever mounting by the hour
• Laudanum keeps the edges soft; lucid spells growing shorter
• Bed-bound for the time that is left; put your affairs in order
• /me asks, in a stretch of clearness, for paper and a pencil while his hand can still hold one.

Recovery There is no reaching it, 1 to 3 days, gentler with laudanum and someone near.·Doctor, urgently

The round nicked bowel, glanced off the hip bone and lodged deep in the muscle beside your spine, the surgeon works from lamplight to gray dawn, flushing with carbolic, chasing lead and bone chips both. He drops the last splinter in the basin as the rooster starts, and neither of you can quite believe you are alive to hear it.

• Burning fever and a rigid belly through day 3
• Broth and water only for 4 days
• Bed-bound 5 days, then a bent shuffle through day 7
• /me lies wax-pale in the gray morning light, a basin of lead and bone chips on the table beside him.

Recovery 7 days flat under the surgeon who dug it out, no one survives this one alone.·Doctor, urgently

The round struck the rim of your hip bone and broke it like a dropped plate, driving splinters into the muscle around it before the lead stopped. The extraction is a long cruel inventory, the mushroomed round first, then bone slivers one by one, each held to the lamp before it rings in the cup.

• Crutch or a shoulder to lean on for 6 days; the hip refuses full weight
• The wound opened and searched again on day 2 and day 4 for missed splinters
• No riding at all for 6 days; a wagon bed if you must travel
• A deep-cratered scar over the hip and an ache there before every rain

Recovery 7 days with a surgeon fishing splinters, or the bone sours and it costs far more than days.·Doctor, urgently

The round caught your lowest rib and broke into two ragged pieces of lead, each finding its own road into the meat of your side. The surgeon digs twice, one piece near the rib, one deep in the flank, and the cracked rib grinds at every breath the whole time.

• Two dig-wounds and a cracked rib; chest bound tight for 5 days
• Shallow careful breaths; laughing and coughing punished for 6 days
• No lifting, hauling or riding above a walk for 6 days
• /me holds his side with both hands to sneeze, braced like a man expecting a punch.

Recovery 7 days for the digs and the rib together, 10 or worse alone.·Doctor, urgently

The tumbling round curved through your side and lodged in the thick muscle near your backbone, so the digging happens with you face-down on the table, biting a strap. The doctor works by feel and lamplight and finally wins, a bent, mushroomed thing that no longer looks like a bullet at all.

• The whole back-waist stiff; no bending to lift for 5 days
• Dig-wound packed and dressed daily for 4 days
• Sleeping belly-down or not at all for 3 nights

Recovery 6 days under a doctor's dressing, 9 alone.·Doctor required

The main weight of the round comes out in the forceps, but it shed slivers of lead along the way and the doctor gets three of five. The last two are too deep to justify the knife, he says, so they stay, small cold passengers that will find you in wet weather.

• Dig-wound dressed for 4 days; deep ache beneath it
• No twisting hauls or heavy lifting for 5 days
• Two slivers of lead in you for keeps, you will call rain a day ahead of the almanac

Recovery 5 days for the digging to close under a doctor, 8 alone; the slivers are permanent company.·Doctor required

The round chipped the hip bone going in and pushed the pieces ahead of it like a plow. The lead itself comes out easy, it is the bone the doctor fishes for, six white splinters retrieved one at a time while you count the boards in the ceiling and hate each one.

• Hip bruised to the bone; a stick to lean on for 4 days
• Wound checked daily for 4 days, any missed splinter means fever
• /me flinches at each small clink in the basin and asks how many that makes now.

Recovery 6 days with a doctor hunting splinters, 9 and worse odds without.·Doctor required

Too deep for whiskey courage, so the doctor measures laudanum until the room goes soft before he opens the track wide and goes hunting. You surface once, hear steel scrape lead somewhere inside you, and go back under on purpose.

• Laudanum-sick the first day, dizzy, dry-mouthed, strange dreams
• Widened dig-wound dressed twice daily for 4 days
• No work heavier than a coffee pot for 4 days

Recovery 5 days cared for, 8 without a doctor's dressing.·Doctor required

Your cartridge belt ate half the round's fury before it broke through, and what was left lodged shallow in the muscle wall without breaching the cavity. The doctor pries the deformed lead out along with a brass shard of your own ammunition, driven in like a splinter.

• A wide, angry bruise under the belt line, tender for 5 days
• Belt worn slung low or across the shoulder for 3 days
• The deformed round and a shard of your own cartridge brass, folded in a twist of paper

Recovery 4 days cared for, 6 alone.·Doctor required

The round stopped a finger's width shy of your insides, wedged in the muscle wall of your belly. The dig is deep enough to be memorable, forceps, a widening cut, a bad minute where he loses his grip on it, but shy of the cavity is shy of the grave, and everyone in the room knows it.

• Stomach muscle seizes at laughing or coughing for 4 days
• No hauling, digging or brawling for 4 days

Recovery 4 days with a doctor's care, 6 without.·Doctor required

The round spent itself hard against the flat of your hip bone and stuck there, flattened like a penny on a rail. The doctor cuts down onto it and pries it loose with a sound you will hear in your sleep, but the bone held, and a bruised bone is a bruise's cousin, not a break.

• Bone-deep hip ache; a hitching walk for 4 days
• Cannot mount from the near side for 3 days
• /me hands the flattened round over for inspection, penny-flat, with the grain of his own hip bone pressed into it.

Recovery 4 days cared for, 6 stubborn ones without.·Doctor required

The first probing finds nothing and the doctor pronounces it deeper than it is, it takes a second dig the next morning, with better light and a steadier stomach, to corner the round hiding under the muscle sheet. Two openings, one bullet, and an argument about the bill.

• Two small dig-wounds side by side, dressed for 4 days
• Side too sore for a saddle above a walk for 3 days

Recovery 4 days from the second dig, 6 careless.·Doctor advised

The round was tumbling when it reached you and hit flat-side-on like a thrown coin, punching a wide shallow pocket into the muscle instead of drilling deep. Ugly hole, honest depth, the doctor lifts it out with barely a probe and calls you the luckiest man shot that week.

• A wide shallow wound, packed for 3 days
• Deep bruise beneath it, tender for 5 days

Recovery 3 days dressed, 5 without.·Doctor advised

The round came off a rock before it found you, wobbling and half spent, and lodged shallow in your side with all the menace gone out of it. The doctor tips it out of the wound and shows you the rock's own scarring on the lead, you were shot by a bullet that lost its first fight.

• A shallow dig, plastered for 2 days
• The scarred ricochet round, good for a story either way

Recovery 2 days with a clean dressing.·Doctor advised

The round broke apart on the wagon's iron tire beside you, and all that reached you was a single ragged shard in the flesh of your side. Tweezers, whiskey, a plaster, less digging than a bad thorn, though the shard is uglier than any thorn you ever met.

• A small ragged nick, tender for 2 days
• A jagged sliver of lead to roll around your palm when you tell it

Recovery A day or 2; salve does the doctoring.·No doctor needed

Spent nearly to nothing, the round slipped in beneath the skin of your belly and stopped where you could see it move when you breathed. One shallow slit from the doctor and it is out before you finish drawing breath for the yell.

• One small slit, two stitches, tender for 2 days
• A small round scar beside the navel where the lump lived

Recovery 2 days; barely worth the chair he sat you in.·No doctor needed

Fired from a ridge too far away, the round arrived exhausted, hooked through the top layer of skin at your waist and hung there like a fish half off the hook. You work it free with two fingers and keep it, because who would believe you otherwise?

• A shallow hooked tear, plastered for 2 days
• The round itself, near unmarked, the farthest-fired shot that ever touched you

Recovery A day or 2 with salve.·No doctor needed

The round went through a water barrel before it found you, and by the time it did it was too tired to break skin, it dropped, spent and steaming, into the waistband of your britches. You danced trying to get it out, which is the part the witnesses tell.

• A scald-mark and a bruise at the waistband, sore for a day or 2
• /me hops in a circle, slapping at his waistband, until the flattened round drops out of his pant leg.

Recovery A day for the bruise, longer for your dignity.·No doctor needed

The round struck the fat tally ledger tucked in the front of your coat and gave up its life in the pages, you find it flattened somewhere around June. There is a book-shaped bruise on your belly and a hole through eight months of accounts.

• A square bruise across the belly, tender for 3 days
• The holed ledger and the flattened round, keep them together, they are a matched set

Recovery 2 or 3 days of bruise; the accounts are a total loss.·No doctor needed

You were carrying a feed sack of horseshoes against your middle when the shot came, and the round spent its whole fury on iron, you go down under the clatter, certain you are killed, and rise with nothing but a horseshoe stamped in bruise. Somewhere in that sack is a mushroomed rifle round, and every shoe in it is luckier than advertised.

• A horseshoe-shaped bruise across the belly, fading over 3 days
• The mushroomed round dug from the sack, the luckiest find a farrier ever made
• /me shakes the feed sack until the flattened round falls out among the horseshoes, then holds it up like a nugget.

Recovery Nothing to mend, a bruise, a bad scare and the best luck iron ever bought.·No doctor needed