Pistol-Whipped

The steel stoves in a piece of your skull, and the cruelty is the lucid hours after, you walk, you talk, you wave off help, and then the words start slipping and one pupil blooms wide. The doctor's remedy is the era's most desperate: the trepan, a drilled hole to let the blood off the brain, by lamplight, tonight.

• Lucid now, fading by the hour, slurring, stumbling, one pupil blown
• If the trepan works: head bandaged and bedbound for 7 days
• Memory holes you fall into mid-sentence
• /me stops mid-word, blinking, as if the sentence walked off without them

Recovery If the trepan finds the bleed in time, a month of a shaved and bandaged skull; if not, you go to sleep and stay.·Doctor, urgently

The barrel comes across your face and the cheekbone gives way beneath it, you feel it move where nothing should. Frontier medicine cannot rebuild that arch; it heals as it lies, and it lies flat, leaving that side of your face visibly sunken.

• Face swollen shut on one side for 5 days, eye a purple slit
• Chewing on that side is over for 7 days
• That cheek heals hollow, a face changed for good
• /me turns the sunken side of their face from the lamplight, an old habit already

Recovery 4 weeks for the bone to knit as it lies; the hollow in your cheek is permanent.·Doctor required

You wake on the floor with a split scalp and a stranger's grip on time, the last hour is simply gone, and the hours ahead come with vomiting, double-thoughts, and light that hurts like an accusation. The doctor's whole pharmacy for this is a dark room and days of stillness.

• Dark room, bed rest, no riding or shooting for 5 days
• Vomiting and vertigo when you stand too fast for 3 days
• The whipping itself and everything said around it: gone from memory

Recovery 10 days of dark and quiet with a doctor checking your eyes; pushed early, the headaches move in for a season.·Doctor required

The barrel rakes your mouth and the arithmetic is grim: two teeth broken at the gumline, lips split against your own smile. Frontier dentistry is a man with pliers, a bottle of whiskey, and no sympathy, the stumps come out tonight or abscess by Sunday.

• Broth and mashed everything for 5 days
• Split lips that crack open at every grin for 4 days
• A gap-toothed smile, and someday, if you're flush, a gold one
• /me runs their tongue over the new gap and winces at the old habit

Recovery 2 weeks for the gums with the stumps pulled clean; left in, they fester into a swollen jaw and a worse week.·Doctor required

The front sight opens your scalp like a letter and the blood is instant, absurd, blinding, scalps bleed like they're paid to. Under the gore it's a finger-length split and a mild rattling; the doctor stitches through matted hair by feel.

• Stitches hidden in blood-matted hair for 4 days
• Dull headache and a tender skull, hats hurt for 3 days
• Wash the blood out and half the injury disappears

Recovery 6 days stitched, 9 if it crusts dirty and cracks.·Doctor required

The barrel lands square across the bridge and your nose goes flat with a crunch you hear from inside. Both eyes blacken by morning into a bandit's mask you didn't ask for, and the doctor resets it with two thumbs and no warning.

• Two black eyes ripening purple to yellow over the week
• Breathe by mouth for 3 days, the nose is packed and useless
• A new angle to the nose, subtle or not, per the reset
• /me touches the taped bridge of their nose and thinks better of sneezing

Recovery 10 days for the swelling and the mask to fade; unset, the nose heals with a story-book bend.·Doctor required

Steel meets brow bone and the skin between gives up entire, split to the bone, bleeding into your eye, with dizzy spells arriving like uninvited kin. Stitched tight, but the ground tilts on you for a couple of days.

• Dizzy spells when you stand fast, no ladders, no saddles for 2 days
• A stitched brow and an eye you keep wiping clear
• A flat white scar through the eyebrow after

Recovery A week with stitches and slow movements, 10 days if you insist on being busy.·Doctor required

No split skin worth naming, just a concussion that arrives like a church bell falling on you. Light hurts, noise hurts, thinking in a straight line hurts; the prescription is a dark room, broth, and the hardest medicine of all: doing nothing.

• Dark room rest, no riding, no gunplay for 4 days
• Nausea in bright light or loud rooms for 3 days
• Conversations slide off you; ask folk to say it twice
• /me winces at the piano and steers wide toward the darkest corner table

Recovery 8 days of quiet with a doctor's say-so; toughed out, headaches follow you a month.·Doctor required

The blow rings you into next Tuesday for half a minute, and when the world comes back it comes back missing pages, notably, everything they asked you and everything you might have answered. A mercy dressed as an injury, some would say.

• The last hour is gone, genuinely, conveniently gone
• A knot behind the ear and a headache for 2 days
• Squinting at loud noises tonight

Recovery 4 days; the hour itself is never coming back.·Doctor advised

The barrel lands flat above your ear and raises a knot you could hang a hat on. No confusion, no missing time, just a lump with its own heartbeat and a headache renting the space behind your eyes.

• A visible goose egg above the ear for 4 days
• Hat sits crooked or not at all for 3 days

Recovery 5 days for the knot to stand down.·Doctor advised

A small split at the hairline and a sky full of stars, you sat down hard without meaning to and watched the room breathe for a minute. Back on your feet before the blood reached your collar, mostly out of spite.

• A small plastered split at the hairline for 3 days
• Brief dizzy swells when you bend over, for a day
• Blood-crusted hairline until you find a basin

Recovery 4 days.·Doctor advised

The steel catches your ear full-on and it swells hot and thick within the hour, ringing like a tuning fork nobody asked for. The doctor drains it with a needle if you're smart; you keep the beginnings of a brawler's ear either way.

• A hot, swollen ear for 4 days, hats and hammocks both hurt
• Ringing on that side for 2 days
• A thickened ear rim, first installment of a fighter's face

Recovery 5 days drained, 8 swollen shut and stubborn.·Doctor advised

The barrel cracks along your jaw and every tooth on that side signs a complaint, one molar now moves when you test it, which you do constantly, because you're human. Chew on the other side and leave it be.

• Chew one-sided for 4 days
• A loose molar you cannot stop tonguing
• Bruised jawline going green by Thursday

Recovery 6 days for the jaw; the tooth tightens back if you quit worrying it.·Doctor advised

Your hat's crown ate most of the blow, dying nobly in the process, beneath it, just a tender knot and a crease in your dignity. The hat will never sit right again; you will, by morning.

• A tender spot under the hair for 2 days
• A hat crown dented into modern art

Recovery 2 days; the hat is past prayer.·No doctor needed

A glancing lick across the top of the skull, a thin cut, a hot scrape, and a headache that clocks out at sundown. It bled just enough to look consequential, which you'll be using.

• A thin scabbed line on the crown for 3 days
• Headache until sundown

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

The pistol's front sight drags a scratch down your cheek as the swing skims past, a thin red signature from a gun that missed its real appointment. Stings at the washbasin, and that's the whole of it.

• A thin scratch down the cheek for 3 days
• /me touches the scratch and eyes the pistol butt in the other fella's belt

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

The blow lands mostly shoulder, partly skull, stars for a breath, a bruise for a week, and nothing that keeps you from finishing the conversation. You've been hit harder by screen doors.

• A bruise at the hairline for 4 days
• One brief head-shake to clear the stars, then business as usual

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

You read the swing and ducked, the steel spends itself on the meat of your shoulder instead of your skull. A deep bruise and a shirt that needs beating out, in exchange for a brainpan still in working order.

• A pistol-shaped bruise on the shoulder for 3 days
• That arm stiff first thing tomorrow

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

The barrel snags your hatband and spends its force flipping the hat clean off your head, your scalp gets a hot sting and your hat gets a fifteen-foot flight. You pick it up, dust it, and put it back on slowly, watching them the whole time.

• A stung scalp, faded by morning
• A hat with a barrel-scuff you'll point to for years
• /me picks up their hat, dusts the brim once, and sets it back dead level

Recovery Overnight.·No doctor needed

The whip glances off your skull at the one angle in a hundred that costs you nothing, and the jolt springs the pistol clean out of their hand to land at your feet. You bend down, pick it up, and now this is a very different conversation.

• A tender spot and a headache that's mostly triumph, gone by morning
• Their pistol, currently in your hand
• /me weighs the dropped pistol in one palm, eyebrows up, waiting

Recovery Overnight. Their pride: no known cure.·No doctor needed