Hand & Fingers: Rifle: Straight Through

The round goes in through your palm no wider than a pencil and leaves through your knuckles like a keg through a window, taking the bones of two fingers with it. The doctor lays out what's left, shakes his head, and finishes with shears and cautery what the rifle already decided, your middle and ring finger end at the first knuckle now, and forever.

• Two fingers gone at the knuckle, stumps cauterized and stitched with silk
• Hand bound in a fat mitten of bandage for 7 days; no shooting, dealing or rope
• Laudanum nights and phantom fingers that itch where nothing is for 2-3 days
• /me deals the cards slow, learning the trick of it all over again

Recovery Stumps close in 7 days with a doctor; the fingers are gone for good.·Doctor, urgently

The round takes a metacarpal square and turns it to splinters, then blows the wreckage out the back of your hand along with itself. The doctor spends the evening lifting slivers of your own bone from the exit wound with forceps, lining them up on a cloth like little white matchsticks.

• Back of the hand laid open and packed; splinted to a board for 7 days
• Nothing in that grip all week, not iron, not rein, not fork
• A ragged exit scar the size of a silver dollar for life
• /me counts the bone slivers in the doctor's tray and quits counting at ten

Recovery 7 days splinted with a doctor's care; it heals crooked in near twice that without.·Doctor, urgently

The exit tears across the back of your hand and takes the cords that lift your fingers with it. Your hand will close but not open, the fingers hang like a puppet with cut strings until the doctor stitches the tendons end to end with silk and splints the hand flat.

• Fingers won't straighten on their own for 5-6 days while the silk holds them together
• Hand splinted open like you're waving; no grip work for 6 days
• One popped stitch means lazy fingers for good, the doctor says, mind the splint

Recovery 6 days splinted with a doctor's silk, 10 and a claw-stiff hand without.·Doctor, urgently

The round misses bone, but the shock of its passing bursts every small vessel between palm and knuckles. By midnight your hand is a drum-tight glove of blood, fingers like sausages, and the doctor slits the skin in two places to let the pressure weep out.

• Hand swollen to twice its size for 3-4 days; fingers barely close
• Lancing cuts dressed daily alongside the two bullet holes for 5 days
• Nail beds gone black-purple, a couple of nails will shed inside the week

Recovery 5 days with a doctor's lancing and dressings, 8 throbbing ones without.·Doctor required

The round threads your palm without touching bone, but the crack of its passing stuns every nerve in the hand. From the wrist down it hangs off your arm like a borrowed thing for a full day, wooden and stupid, and pins and needles hold court for days after.

• Hand numb and near useless the first day, it drops what you don't watch it hold
• Pins and needles for 3-4 days after; buttons and matches are your enemies
• Two clean holes wrapped for 4 days

Recovery 4-5 days as the feeling returns with a doctor's care, a week of wooden fumbling otherwise.·Doctor required

The round slips between two metacarpals and out the back, never striking bone square, but the shock of it cracks one anyway, the way ice cracks around a thrown stone. The holes are neat; the deep grinding ache is not.

• One cracked bone in the hand, buddy-splinted for 4-5 days
• No recoil through that hand for 5 days; a fired shot will buckle you
• Deep ache on cold mornings, worse when you grip hard

Recovery 5 days splinted with a doctor, 8 if you insist on working it.·Doctor required

The exit doesn't punch a hole so much as peel one, a flap of skin the size of a poker chip lifts off the back of your hand, hanging by an edge. The doctor washes it in carbolic, lays it back down like a bedsheet, and stitches all around the border.

• Stitched flap dressed daily for 4 days, if it blackens, it gets cut away and packed instead
• No knuckle-bending hard enough to strain the stitches for 4 days
• /me traces the neat square of stitching on the back of their hand

Recovery 4-5 days if the flap takes, longer and uglier if it dies.·Doctor required

Close enough that the muzzle blast comes through with the round: the entry in your palm is tattooed black with powder, and the channel through is scorched. The doctor scrubs unburnt grains out of the skin with a stiff brush, which you will remember longer than the shot.

• Palm scrubbed raw and dressed for 3-4 days; it weeps like a burn because it is one
• A speckled gray powder-tattoo around the entry scar, permanent as ink
• Grip stings on rope, rein and iron for 4 days

Recovery 4 days with carbolic and a burn dressing, 6-7 weeping ones without.·Doctor required

Straight through the middle of the palm's muscle and out, touching nothing that has a name. But fast lead bruises where it doesn't cut, and by morning the whole hand is stiff, blue-black and a size too big.

• Whole hand bruised and stiff for 3-4 days; morning fingers move like rusted hinges
• Half grip only, no fanning, roping or fist-fighting for 3 days
• Bruise runs to the wrist like spilled ink under the skin

Recovery 3-4 days with rest and a wrap, 6 if you keep making fists.·Doctor advised

In, out and buried in the wall behind you before the pain even saddles up. Two small holes through the edge-meat of your palm, so tidy the doctor mostly just washes them with carbolic and compliments the shooter's aim.

• Both holes wrapped for 3 days; grip tender but working
• No fast-draw or hard rope work for 3 days
• /me lines a pencil up with the twin scars, showing the path clean through

Recovery 3 days with a wash and wrap, 5 on your own.·Doctor advised

The round passes through the blade of your hand below the little finger, missing the bones by a card's width. It bleeds hard and swells the edge of your hand into a mitt, but every finger still answers roll call.

• Hand's edge swollen and useless for chopping or bracing for 2-3 days
• Grip fine for reins, poor for hauling rope or hefting a rifle's forestock for 3 days
• Two coin-sized scars on the blade of the hand

Recovery 3 days wrapped, 4-5 tender ones without.·Doctor advised

Taken at an angle, the round tunnels through skin along the back of your hand and out at the wrist, skipping over the tendons like a flat stone over water. The furrow bruises them all the same, and your fingers lift slow and grudging for a couple of days.

• Fingers stiff on the uplift for 2-3 days; penmanship goes to pieces
• A long double-ended scar from knuckles toward the wrist
• Gloves are misery until the swelling quits, 2 days or so

Recovery 2-3 days dressed, 4-5 raw and slow without.·Doctor advised

Fired from a long way off, the round still has manners enough to go clean through the outer meat of your palm, and no further, dropping down inside your sleeve like a shamefaced apology. The holes are small, the ache is honest, and you keep the lead.

• Two small holes wrapped 2-3 days; grip at three-quarters
• A flattened rifle round in your pocket with your name almost on it

Recovery 2-3 days wrapped, 4 untended.·Doctor advised

The round passes through the pinch of skin along the outer edge of your hand, in and out through nothing but hide, a buttonhole where no button goes. It burns like a brand and bleeds about three drops.

• A stinging buttonhole of a wound, plastered for 2 days
• Bracing a long gun on that edge smarts for 2 days

Recovery 2 days, doctor or none.·No doctor needed

The round grazes through the skin over your middle knuckle at speed, splitting it to the bone's roof without so much as chipping it. Looks like you punched a stove; works nearly as well as ever.

• Knuckle taped for 1-2 days; every fist reopens it if not
• Blood spots on your cuff and everything you handle the first day
• /me sucks at the split knuckle and goes back to what they were doing

Recovery 1-2 days taped, 3 cracking open without.·No doctor needed

Through the fat pad below your thumb, shallow as a fishhook wound, in one side and out a finger-width later. The thumb works; it just complains about the wages.

• Pinch grip sore for 1-2 days; hammer-cocking done delicately
• Two small puckers in the pad, close enough to cover with one coin

Recovery 1-2 days wrapped, 3 without.·No doctor needed

The round shaves through the topmost layer of skin on the back of your hand, entering and leaving inside the space of an inch. A red-hot line, a smell of scorched hair, and a curse you invent on the spot.

• A raw hot line across the hand, stinging for a day
• One glove goes on gingerly for a day or two

Recovery A day of sting, a week of an interesting mark.·No doctor needed

The round tears through the loose leather cuff of your gauntlet, in one side and out the other, and never finds the hand inside it. You get a welt like a quirt-lash across the back of your hand and a glove ventilated front and back.

• A raised red welt, tender for a day
• A gauntlet with two holes that line up perfect for the doubters

Recovery The welt's gone in a day; the gauntlet tells it forever.·No doctor needed

You had the reins gathered high in your fist, and the round takes them clean in two a finger's width above your knuckles. The cut ends snap across your fingers like a schoolmarm's ruler, and that sting is the whole of your wound.

• A red lash-line across the fingers for a few hours
• A spliced rein and a horse that heard it pass closer than you did
• /me holds up the two cut ends of rein, measuring the inch that mattered

Recovery The sting fades by evening; the story never does.·No doctor needed

The round meant for your hand takes the bottle out of it instead, blowing whiskey and glass into a golden halo you will describe for the rest of your life. You're left holding the neck by its cork, hand stinging from spray and speckled with beads of glass that brush off like sand.

• A few pinprick glass stings, gone by morning
• A whiskey-soaked sleeve and the bottleneck you refuse to throw away
• /me sets the bare bottleneck on the bar and asks for a refill in it

Recovery Nothing to heal but your thirst.·No doctor needed