Rockslide, Cave-In & Crush

The timbering cracks once in warning and the slab comes down across your chest. There's no pain at first, just weight, and breath going shallow while your partners tear their hands bloody levering stone in the lamp-dark. What the weight did inside you, only the hours will say.

• Dug free only by others, a rescue scene is owed, and earned
• Breaths shallow and counted; ribs stove and grinding
• Morphine and a doctor's vigil, moved by stretcher and nothing faster
• /me breathes in small sips, dust-white except where the blood shows

Recovery A week's vigil under morphine with the doctor's ear on your chest; what's hurt inside is beyond any medicine but stillness and luck·Doctor, urgently

A barrel-sized stone settles on your leg below the knee and stays. It takes four friends and a pry-pole a long, well-remembered while to lift the mountain off you, and what comes out from under isn't shaped quite like a leg anymore.

• The dig-out scene: pry-poles, cursing, and your name said gently
• Leg splinted and kept raised, no weight on it for 7 days
• The doctor checks warmth and color in the foot twice daily, that is the whole war
• Numb patches and pins-and-needles below the knee for days

Recovery 7 days raised and watched by a doctor fighting for the limb; untreated, crushed flesh dies quick and decides cruelly·Doctor, urgently

The trench wall slumps and takes you with it, packing you to the chest in earth that squeezes tighter with every breath you give up. By the time shovels free you, your ribs creak, your lungs are full of grit, and you know exactly what a grave rehearsal feels like.

• Cracked ribs, no lifting or digging for 5 days
• Coughing up mud-grey for 3 days
• Cannot abide tight spaces or blankets tucked snug, for now
• /me flinches hard when loose dirt patters down nearby

Recovery 5 days strapped and coughing it out under a doctor's care, 7 alone, and the dreams take longer than the ribs·Doctor required

You brace against the shoring as the wall shifts, and the timber pins your forearm to the rock and grinds. The arm breaks in two places before your partner's axe cuts the beam through.

• Plastered elbow to knuckles, no use of that arm for 6 days
• A timber-bruise black as tar wrapped around both breaks
• You owe your arm to another soul's axe-work, and you both know it

Recovery 6 days in plaster with a doctor's setting; unset, it knits crooked and weak and wants breaking fresh·Doctor required

A falling stone lands square on your boot and stays there like it's nesting. The leather saves the toes; the small bones above them bruise to the marrow, and the boot has to be cut off a foot gone twice its size.

• The boot cut away, wrapped foot and a walking stick for 4 days
• No boots, only wraps, for 3 days
• Counts all ten toes nightly, out of ceremony and relief

Recovery 4 days wrapped and raised with a doctor's look-over, 6 if you keep standing shifts on it·Doctor required

A fist-sized rock rides the slide down and glances off your skull, your hat the only shoring between. You keep your feet for three proud seconds, then sit down in the rubble without being asked.

• Four stitches in the scalp under matted hair
• No fast riding or gun work for 3 days
• Sick in bright lamplight for 2 days
• The hat, dented beyond blocking, is retired with full honors

Recovery 3 days of quiet with a doctor watching your eyes, 5 foggy ones without·Doctor required

The cross-timber comes down flat across your shoulders and drives you to your knees in the muck. Nothing snaps, but the bruise runs shoulder to shoulder like a yoke, and your arms lift like they're borrowed from an older man.

• No lifting, shoveling, or pick-work for 4 days
• Arms above shoulder height impossible for 3 days
• A beam-wide bruise across the back, a story trophy at the bathhouse
• /me rolls their shoulders slow and careful, like the beam might still be up there

Recovery 4 days of liniment and light duty, 6 if you swing a pick anyway·Doctor required

The collapse misses you; the dust doesn't. You breathe the mountain's whole grey exhale in the dark, and come out into daylight retching, eyes glued shut, throat like a stovepipe in January.

• Coughing fits for 3 days, worse in smoke, wind, or argument
• Voice a rasp for 2 days, whispers, gestures, and writing on slates
• Eyes rinsed with boric water, weepy and red for a day

Recovery 3 days of honey, steam, and rest with a doctor's advice, 5 hacking ones without·Doctor required

You yank your hand out from under a settling stone half a heartbeat late. The fingers come back, all of them, but fat, purpled, and useless for anything finer than pointing.

• Fingers splinted together like sausages for 3 days
• No gun hand, no cards, no buttons for 2 days
• Two nails going black, proof for the bar, free of charge

Recovery 3 days splinted, 5 before a fist closes proper; the nails tell the story for a season·Doctor advised

A stone the size of a bread loaf takes you on the shoulder as you turn away. It knocks you flat into the tailings, and the arm rings numb to the fingertips for an hour before settling into a deep, honest ache.

• That arm stays low, nothing above shoulder height for 3 days
• A bruise like spilled ink spreading for 4 days
• Carries feed sacks and firewood on the off side, grumbling

Recovery 3 days of aching, 5 if you keep hauling with it·Doctor advised

A sheet of shale skims down the slope and opens your shin like a letter. It's long but shallow, a bleeding nuisance that soaks a sock and needs a careful scrubbing before it's wrapped.

• Scrubbed with carbolic, the washing hurts worse than the cutting did
• Shin wrapped; walk, never sprint, for 2 days
• A thin white scar down the shin to keep

Recovery 2 days wrapped and clean, 5 weeping ones if the grit stays in·Doctor advised

You're clear of the slide itself, it's the running that gets you, the ankle folding in loose tailings one stride short of safe ground. You crawl the last yard on principle.

• Walk, never sprint, for 3 days
• Ankle wrapped tight, boot laced loose over it
• /me limps out of the settling dust, hauled upright by a partner's fist in their collar

Recovery 3 days wrapped and favored, 5 if you keep working slopes·Doctor advised

A rolling stone the size of a nail keg catches you across the ribs as it passes, a glancing blow that still knocks the wind clean out and prints its diameter on your side in bruise.

• Ribs bruised, no lifting for 3 days
• A perfectly round bruise that folks ask about all week
• Breathes shallow when reaching overhead for 2 days

Recovery 3 days of careful breathing, 5 before the ring fades·Doctor advised

The slide's leading edge is all small stuff, and it sandblasts you head to boot as you dive clear. You come up pocked with gravel-stings and one nick above the ear, loud with complaint, light on damage.

• A stipple of gravel-stings down one side for 2 days
• A crusted nick above the ear, hidden by the hat
• Grit in your hair through two washings

Recovery 2 days of stinging, then just the grit in your teeth to remember it·No doctor needed

You dance clear of every stone and the dust cloud swallows you whole anyway. You walk out grey as a miller's ghost, coughing theatrically, with nothing wounded but your lungs' patience.

• A dry cough for a day
• Grey head to boot until a proper bath
• Sneezes sudden enough to startle the horses

Recovery A day of hacking, a bath, and it's done·No doctor needed

The slide takes the hem of your coat and holds it like a bear trap. You shed the coat in one motion and step clear, then spend an hour digging out the coat, which fared considerably worse than you did.

• A bruised elbow from the shed-and-dive, sore for a day
• The coat needs a tailor, a wash, and possibly last rites
• A new and permanent respect for warning creaks, free of charge

Recovery A day for the elbow; the coat's prognosis is guarded·No doctor needed

You go down scrambling over the tailings ahead of the slide and finish the trip on all fours. Knees barked, knuckles skinned, dignity distributed evenly across thirty feet of rubble.

• Skinned knuckles that sting in wash-water for 2 days
• Barked knees, kneels gingerly at fires and prayers alike
• /me picks grit from their palms without breaking the conversation

Recovery 2 days of stinging scabs, then just the story·No doctor needed

The timber groans once, like a ship in weather, and some old instinct moves your feet before your mind votes on it. The slab drops exactly where you stood, close enough to clip your bootheel as a keepsake.

• A scarred bootheel shown to every soul in camp
• An hour of the shakes once it's over
• Listens to timber like scripture now, and hushes others to hear it

Recovery Nothing to heal; the shakes pass with the first cup of coffee·No doctor needed

Two stones the size of stoves land either side of you, close enough to touch, and the rest of the slide splits around them like water around a bridge piling. You stand untouched in the one safe yard on the whole slope.

• Not a mark, witnesses swear to it, repeatedly
• A dust silhouette where you stood, photographed in every memory present
• Providence owed a candle, and it gets one

Recovery Nothing to heal; the disbelief takes a few days to wear off·No doctor needed

The roof comes down and the big slab jams crosswise a hand's-width above you, shrugging the whole collapse onto its own back. You crawl out of the pocket it made through a gap no wider than a coffin lid, into lamplight and shouting, wearing the mountain's weight as nothing but dust on your shoulders.

• Scraped shoulders from the crawl, sore for a day
• Miners walk down on their off-shift just to see the slab that spared you
• /me emerges from the rubble with dust pouring off like smoke, to dead silence and then a roar

Recovery A day for the scrapes; the slab gets your name and keeps it·No doctor needed