Knife Stab: Gut

The blade goes deep and the bowel is pierced, you feel almost fine for a day, and that's the cruelest part. Then the fever lights, the belly goes board-hard, and the doctor tells you plain: peritonitis, and only a laparotomy few frontier surgeons will dare might turn it.

• Bedridden, belly rigid and untouchable
• Rising fever and a thirst nothing answers
• Time to say what needs saying while you're still lucid
• /me lies still and grey, hands folded over a bound belly, talking soft

Recovery With a surgeon willing to open you and luck riding shotgun, a month on your back; without both, days.·Doctor, urgently

The steel punched through the muscle wall and the doctor cannot swear the bowel is whole. So begins the fortnight watch: bed rest, broth, and his hand on your forehead twice a day, both of you listening for the fever that means the worst.

• Strict bed rest, walk only to the chamber pot for 7 days
• Wound kept open with a lint wick, dressed and drained daily
• Nothing but broth and bread until the doctor says otherwise
• /me lifts their shirt hem so the doc can sniff the dressing, jaw tight

Recovery 2 weeks of doctor-watched bed rest if the fever never comes; if it comes, all bets are off.·Doctor, urgently

A deep puncture, clean of the vitals but filthy with everything else. Puncture wounds seal over dirt like a liar's smile, so the doctor keeps yours open on purpose, a wick of carbolic-soaked lint, changed every day, and every change is a small war.

• Daily dressing changes that hurt worse than the stabbing did
• No riding for 4 days, no lifting for 7
• Move like a man carrying a full pail, slow and level

Recovery 12 days of open drainage under a doctor; sealed shut early, it abscesses and you start over sicker.·Doctor required

The blade went in and turned as they pulled it free, tearing a ragged channel through the belly muscle. Nothing vital touched, the doctor says so twice, but every cough, laugh, and step tugs the torn wall.

• Brace your belly with a hand to stand, sit, or laugh
• No riding at anything above a walk for 5 days
• Bound tight in a wide bandage wrap for 7 days
• /me rises from the chair in slow stages, one arm pressed across their middle

Recovery 2 weeks bound and rested; untreated the tear knots into a lump that aches for months.·Doctor required

The point sank two inches into the muscle and stopped there, kind by the standards of gut steel. Cleaned with whiskey, then carbolic, then stitched, sore for a week and a fine lesson in standing further back.

• Deep bruised ache in the belly for 4 days
• No lifting, hauling, or throwing for 5 days
• Sleep on your back whether you like it or not

Recovery A week with a doctor's cleaning, 10 days and a fever scare without.·Doctor required

A puncture just deep enough to worry about what rode in on the blade. The doctor packs it with carbolic-soaked lint and you learn the era's ugliest ritual: pull the packing, swab the hole, pack it fresh, every day.

• Daily packing changes for 5 days, bring your grit
• The dressing seeps; keep a clean shirt handy
• /me grips the table edge white-knuckled while the packing comes out

Recovery 8 days draining clean; skip the ritual and it festers into something the doctor charges double for.·Doctor required

The stab came in low and the hip bone turned it, the point gouged along the crest instead of sinking in. Bone bruise and a deep cut, and you'll walk like your boots are full of gravel for a while.

• Hitching, careful walk for 4 days
• Getting on a horse is a two-stage operation
• Deep ache in the hip when you've stood too long

Recovery A week with stitches and rest, 10 days limping it off.·Doctor required

The blade drove upward and the rib margin caught it, the point stopping a knuckle short of anything you can't spare. A deep, angry cut along the bottom rib that makes every deep breath a negotiation.

• Shallow breaths only, deep ones grab like a fist for 4 days
• No sprinting for 5 days
• Stitched line riding the bottom rib, tender under a gunbelt

Recovery 8 days stitched, 12 unstitched and swearing.·Doctor required

A short, honest puncture into the belly muscle that bled clean and quit. Washed with whiskey that cost more than the doctor would have, and closed with two stitches.

• Tender to the touch, no roughhousing for 3 days
• Twists and turns remind you sharply
• /me presses a palm flat to their side before easing into a chair

Recovery 5 days, 7 if you keep testing it.·Doctor advised

The puncture closed itself overnight, neat as you please, and the doctor frowns, sealed wounds hide dirt. He opens it back up with a lancet and cleans it properly while explaining, at length, why you should have come yesterday.

• Freshly re-opened and dressed, keep it dry for 3 days
• A lecture from the doctor you'll be quoting for weeks
• Sore, seeping spot under the shirt

Recovery 6 days once it's cleaned right; left sealed, a fever week.·Doctor advised

Your gunbelt caught half the thrust and skin caught the rest, a shallow puncture right at the belt line that the leather nearly stopped cold. The belt wears the scar better than you do.

• Wearing the gunbelt stings for 3 days
• A gouged belt and a shallow, scabbing hole beneath it
• Bend at the knees, not the waist, for 2 days

Recovery 5 days; the belt needs a new hole punched anyway.·Doctor advised

The blade found the soft flesh above your hip, the one spot on the belly with nothing behind it but your pride. Clean through the pinch of it and out, two holes for the price of one.

• Two small dressings on one love handle for 4 days
• Sitting crooked to spare it
• /me shifts in the saddle, favoring one side with a sour look

Recovery 6 days, and the doctor didn't even try to hide his smile.·Doctor advised

More punch than puncture, the point barely parted skin but the fist behind it drove your wind clean out. You sat down hard in the sawdust wondering if you were dying, and you weren't.

• A shallow cut and a fist-deep bruise on the belly
• Winded easily for 2 days
• Tender spot that makes you flinch from friendly backslaps

Recovery 4 days, mostly for the bruise.·Doctor advised

The leather vest slowed the point to a whisper, it broke skin, barely, and died there. The vest has a neat hole in it; you have something that hardly counts.

• A pinprick scab under a punctured vest
• Bruised spot the size of a silver dollar for 2 days

Recovery 2 days; the vest hole becomes a talking point.·No doctor needed

The point pricked you and skipped away as you twisted, a button's worth of blood and a bad memory. You've bled more on a barbed-wire fence.

• A small scab at the belly for 2 days
• A ruined shirt front, more blood than wound

Recovery 2 days.·No doctor needed

The blade turned flat against you at the last instant and the blow landed like a mule kick instead of a murder. You wheezed on your knees for a minute, then stood up whole.

• Deep belly bruise blooming by morning
• Short of breath if you run for the next day
• /me straightens up slow, one hand on their gut, waving off help

Recovery 3 days of tender.·No doctor needed

The point dragged shallow across your belly as you sucked in and jumped back, a long scratch that looks theatrical and means nothing. The suck-and-jump saved you a month of trouble.

• A long thin scratch across the stomach, scabbing by night
• Waistband rubs it for 2 days

Recovery 3 days to nothing at all.·No doctor needed

The point meets your belt buckle dead center with a sound like a dropped horseshoe. The buckle wears a bright new scar; you wear a grin you can't help.

• A gouged belt buckle you'll never polish out on purpose
• A bruise behind it, gone in a day

Recovery Overnight.·No doctor needed

You twisted as it came and the blade slit coat and shirt in one long line without finding you underneath. Cold air on bare skin was the whole of the injury.

• A slashed coat and shirt, both salvageable
• A story where you get to say 'and I felt the cold of it'

Recovery None needed; the sewing takes an evening.·No doctor needed

The blade drives into your money belt and spends itself on silver, you pull out a half-dollar folded near in two around the point's dent. The doctor charges you nothing; the coin is worth more bent than it ever was flat.

• A bent half-dollar to hang on your watch chain
• A bruise under the money belt, gone in a day
• /me flips a folded coin, catches it, and pockets it like a holy relic

Recovery By morning. The coin never recovers, and that's the point.·No doctor needed