Bad Air in the Shaft

You never smelled a thing. The drift just went warm and kindly, your knees folded, and the blackdamp settled over you like a quilt. They found you by your dead lamp and dragged you out by the ankles, blue lipped and barely breathing. The doctor works your arms like pump handles half the night, ammonia spirits under your nose, and when you finally gasp he does not smile. The damp starved your lungs and your brain both, and he cannot say yet how much of either it gave back.

• Bedridden by an open window for 5 days, propped upright, no exertion beyond lifting a cup
• Wits fogged for 2 to 3 weeks: names slip, words go missing mid sentence, no sums, no contracts, no card games for money
• Lungs whistle on any effort; no underground work, no running, no ladders for a full month
• /me stares a long moment at a familiar face, mouthing at a name that will not come

Recovery Weeks. The lungs mend in a month if fever stays away; the wits come back slower, and the doctor will not swear to all of them.·Doctor, urgently

Your partner found you face down at the working face with your lamp dead beside you and screamed for the rope. Topside they laid you on a plank and worked your arms over your head and down again, the old way, while somebody ran for the doctor. It took the better part of two hours before you coughed and swore, which the men agreed was a good sign. Your skull has been splitting ever since, and your stomach will hold nothing.

• Abed 3 days, sitting up only, every meal a gamble your stomach mostly loses
• A headache like a drill steel for 4 days: no bright sun, no loud rooms
• Wits slow for a week, no tallying shifts, no handling powder, no decisions worth money
• /me presses both palms flat against the temples and breathes through a wave of it

Recovery Three days abed and a slow week after; the headache is the last to leave.·Doctor, urgently

The warning was a warm, sweet heaviness, like sleep after whiskey, and by the time you understood it your legs had already voted. You went down against the coal and your partner got your collar and dragged you a hundred feet to the airway with your bootheels plowing the muck. Good air brought you around retching. Your heart has been skipping and lurching like a bad watch ever since, and the doctor wants it listened to daily.

• Heart flutters at any strain for 5 days: no lifting, no ladders, no running, walk like a churchgoer
• Short of wind after a dozen steps for 3 days, rests come whether planned or not
• No underground work until the doctor has listened to your chest three mornings straight
• /me stops mid stride, hand to the breastbone, waiting for the heart to find its step again

Recovery Up in 2 days, honest work in a week, and only if the heart settles.·Doctor required

They could not carry you up the ladders limp, so they lashed you into the ore bucket, knees to chin, and cranked you to grass like a load of muck. Daylight and cold air brought you halfway back; the retching did the rest. The rope bruised you in a spiral from shoulder to hip, and the headache landed about an hour later, a hammer swung from the inside.

• Rope bruises wrapping ribs and shoulder, no pack straps or heavy hauling for 4 days
• Vomiting on and off through the first day, broth and water only until it stops
• The hammer headache for 2 days; darkness and quiet are the only medicine that touches it
• /me eases the shirt off one shoulder, showing a rope bruise wound round like a barber pole

Recovery Two days flat, then light work; the bruising fades inside a week.·Doctor required

You made it to the ladderway on will alone, got one hand on a rung, and your legs simply left the argument. You hung there by that one hand, hollering weakly, until they got a rope under your arms and hauled you up sixty feet like a sack of feed. You have spent the day since retching into a bucket with a headache that swings like a nine pound hammer, but you are topside, and that is the whole of the good news.

• A full day of retching: water in sips, nothing solid until tomorrow
• Headache pounding for 2 days, worse bending over, no stooping work
• Rope welts under both arms, no carrying yokes or shoulder loads for 3 days
• /me leans over the bucket again, then straightens slow, eyes screwed shut against the hammering

Recovery A day of misery, two more of headache, right by week's end.·Doctor required

The flame drew down to nothing and died, and the dark came in with the damp. You dropped to hands and knees where the air lies less foul and crawled by feel along the rail toward the airway, a hundred yards of rock and splinters, lungs pulling harder and getting less. When the cold clean draft finally hit your face you lay in it and sobbed like a calf. Your palms and knees paid the toll.

• Both palms shredded, picked clean of grit and bandaged: no gripping tools or reins for 4 days
• Knees raw through torn trousers, kneeling work is off for a week
• A racking cough that tastes of coal for 3 days, worse lying flat, sleep propped up
• /me flexes bandaged hands slowly, wincing as the torn palms pull under the wrapping

Recovery Hands take 4 or 5 days to close; the cough clears within the week.·Doctor required

The damp dropped you without a word of warning, and on the way down your brow met the corner of a timber set. Your partner heard the lamp clatter, got you under the arms, and walked you swearing and bleeding into good air. The doctor closes the split with four silk stitches and worries less about the cut than the two kinds of dizzy you are carrying: the knock and the gas, taking turns.

• Four silk stitches above the eyebrow, kept dry 5 days, out in a week if clean
• Dizzy spells from knock and gas both for 3 days: no ladders, no shaft edges, no riding alone
• Watched through the first night and woken every few hours to say your own name
• /me touches the stitched brow, sways a half step, and finds the wall with one hand

Recovery Stitches out in a week; the double dizziness fades in 3 or 4 days.·Doctor required

You lost the fight quietly: the drift began to tilt, your shovel got heavy as a church door, and the next clear thing you knew, your partner had your arm over his shoulders and was walking you toward the airway, cussing you gently the whole way. You breathed enough of it to lose the morning. Your chest burns like you swallowed a stove coal and your legs still belong to somebody drunker.

• Chest burning on any deep breath for 3 days, no swinging a pick or shoveling
• Legs unsteady through today, a stick or a steadying shoulder for any distance
• Topside work only for 2 days, on the foreman's word and the doctor's
• /me takes a careful breath, grimaces at the burn of it, and lets the rest out slow

Recovery Steady by tomorrow, the chest burn gone within 3 days.·Doctor advised

The flame drew down long and blue and began to gutter, and every mine tale you ever half listened to came back at once. You backed down the drift with your eyes on that flame like it was a preacher at a hanging, and you came out at the airway coughing your boots up. The cough has an edge to it and your head is banded tight, but you walked out on your own legs, and plenty have not.

• A tearing cough today and tomorrow, worse in dusty air, no drift work for 2 days
• A band of headache till morning; strong coffee helps, the dark helps more
• /me coughs hard into a fist, then studies the fist like it owes money

Recovery Cough and headache both gone in 2 days.·Doctor advised

The dizziness arrived between one shovelful and the next, and the drift swapped its floor for one of its walls. You bounced your shoulder hard off the rib, caught yourself on the car, and had the sense to follow the rails out while the world tilted. At the shaft collar you sat down in front of everyone and retched once, formally, which the men will be doing impressions of for a month.

• A deep shoulder bruise off the rock, no loads or rifle recoil on that side for 3 days
• Wobbly legs and a swimming head till tonight, no ladders after dark
• Queasy till nightfall, plain food and water only
• /me rolls the bruised shoulder with care and pretends not to hear the impression of the retch

Recovery Head clear by morning; the shoulder bruise takes a week to fade.·Doctor advised

You caught it light and paid in coin all the same: a headache that moved in behind your eyes an hour after you surfaced and has been swinging steady since. Your legs have opinions about stairs. The old doctor sniffs your breath, thumbs back an eyelid, and prescribes daylight, beef broth, and absolutely no going back down today, which suits every part of you fine.

• The headache through today and half of tomorrow: no gunfire nearby, no bright glare, no arithmetic
• Legs unreliable on stairs and ladders until morning
• No underground shifts until the head clears, foreman notified
• /me winces at a slammed door as if it were a pistol shot beside the ear

Recovery Sound again in a day and a half; the headache leaves with the second sunset.·Doctor advised

It got the pair of you at once, you and your partner, both woozy as Saturday drunks and two hundred feet from good air. You each got a fist in the other's belt and lurched up the drift like a four legged animal that could not agree with itself, and you both fell out into the airway laughing that terrible thin laugh of men who nearly did not. Neither of you can hold a meal down tonight, and neither of you will tell it the same way twice.

• Stomach in revolt until morning: broth, coffee, and nothing braver
• Woozy on quick turns for a day, no riding faster than a walk
• You owe your partner a drink and he owes you one, an unpayable standoff of 1 evening minimum
• /me grips an imaginary belt and demonstrates the four legged lurch, poorly

Recovery A rough night and right by tomorrow supper.·Doctor advised

You felt it coming, rang the bell, and had the good manners to hold your stomach until the cage cleared the collar, at which point manners ended. You rode up green, retched into the sump, and sat an hour with your back against the headframe leg while your head shrank slowly back to its usual size. The onsetter says you looked like a boiled owl. You feel one owl short of that.

• Queasy till midnight: dry crackers and water, nothing rich
• Head thick until tomorrow noon, no tally work or letters
• /me sits down against the nearest solid thing, waves off help, and keeps one hand raised until sure

Recovery One rough evening; sound by tomorrow suppertime.·No doctor needed

You caught one mouthful of it at the crosscut, sweet and wrong, and you were moving before the thought finished. Out in the main airway your heart slowed itself back down like a spooked horse being gentled. Nothing came of it but a headache that arrived polite and small at supper and left before the plates were cleared. You nailed a board across the crosscut and told the shift boss twice.

• A small polite headache through the evening, gone by bedtime
• That crosscut is barred and reported, and you will not go past the board for love or wages
• /me tips their head at the barred crosscut and gives it a wide, respectful berth

Recovery Gone entirely by morning.·No doctor needed

The candle told you plain: the flame shrank down to a blue bead sitting on the wick like a warning eye. You backed out at a pace just short of undignified and barked your shin on the rail in the doing, the only blood the drift got out of you today. The old men nodded slow when you described the flame. That nod is worth more than the shin.

• A barked shin, cleaned and wrapped, tender on stairs for 2 days
• Back at that heading only behind a safety lamp and an old timer, no exceptions
• /me hikes a trouser leg to show the barked shin, and tells the flame part anyway

Recovery The shin scab is the whole bill; call it 3 days.·No doctor needed

It thinned your wind and nothing more. Halfway through mucking a car you noticed the shovel getting heavier than the muck warranted and your breath coming up short of the bottom, and you had the rare good sense to say so out loud. The foreman sent you up to sit in the sun, where the wind came back over an afternoon, a little sheepish about the fuss.

• Short of a full breath till tomorrow, no heavy shovel or pick work today
• Topside duty this shift: sorting, splicing, and enduring commentary
• /me pauses shoveling, leans on the handle, and takes stock of a breath that comes up short

Recovery Full wind back by tomorrow's shift.·No doctor needed

It nipped you just enough to make the lamp swim, and you walked yourself out holding the rail like a temperance man leaving a wedding. You sat an hour in the mule barn where the air is warm and sweet with hay, sharing an apple with a mule named Deacon, who has been gassed more times than any man on the payroll and looks it. The headache never got worse than a Sunday sermon, and it ended sooner.

• A mild headache through the afternoon, gone by dark
• No return below today; the shift boss has spoken and so, in his way, has Deacon
• /me splits the apple fair and even with the mule, who has clearly done this before

Recovery Right as rain by supper.·No doctor needed

You had one boot into the drift when your candle went out flat, no flicker, no argument, like a thumb had come down on it. You stood a moment in the dark with your skin crawling, then stepped backward the way a man leaves a sleeping bear. Relit at the airway, the flame burned tall and honest. You never took one lungful of the stuff. The cold sweat you took instead dried free of charge.

• Not a mark on you, only a healthy new religion regarding dead candles
• You walk the airways checking flames for a week, and the men are glad of it
• /me holds the relit candle up and watches the flame stand tall before taking one more step

Recovery Nothing to recover but composure; give it an hour.·No doctor needed

You never noticed a thing, which is the whole horror of it. Old Hettinger stopped mid step ahead of you, tilted his gray head, and took one long draw of the drift air like a sommelier of ruin. Then his fist closed on your collar and walked you backward forty feet before he said a single word. The word was blackdamp. His candle, carried into the mouth of it at arm's length, drew down blue and small, and you stood there watching what would have taken you quiet.

• Untouched, and painfully aware of exactly how
• You owe the old timer a bottle of the good stuff and every drink he claims off you for a month
• /me looks from the guttering candle to the old timer and back, and shakes his hand too long

Recovery Nothing to heal. The debt, however, compounds.·No doctor needed

The trammer went down fifty feet ahead of you, folded quiet into the muck, and there was no time for anything but arithmetic. You stepped back to the airway, pulled one breath in clear to the boot soles, and walked into the dead air like walking into a river. You got him over your shoulder on the first heave, made the turn, and came out into the draft with your lungs banging on the door but never once opened. He woke coughing. You never even sat down. The whole level saw it, and the story is already up the shaft ahead of you.

• Not one thing wrong with you that a quiet hour and a plug of tobacco will not square
• The trammer owes you his life and knows it; his wife has already sent a pie
• Every man on the level tells it bigger than the last; by payday you carried out two men and the mule
• /me shrugs when the story is told, as if one breath was always going to be plenty

Recovery None needed. The legend, if anything, gains strength daily.·No doctor needed