Wagon or Stagecoach Wreck

The coach goes over and you go under, and the full weight of oak, iron, and luggage comes down across you. They lever it off with fence rails to find your chest crushed and one leg ruined beneath the wheel rim. The doctor lays out morphine and his instruments both, and asks who should be sent for, the leg may come off, if you live to lose it.

• Carried from the wreck on a door, bedbound and morphine-deep
• Chest crushed, each breath is a wet, whistling labor
• The wheel-crushed leg is splinted, but the doctor's face says bonesaw
• /me is carried past on a barn door, eyes half-open, gripping a stranger's hand

Recovery Days on the edge under constant care, and weeks after if you keep breathing, alone, the wreck finishes what it started.·Doctor, urgently

You are thrown from the box and the rear wheel rolls across your shin before the coach fully stops, iron tire, full load. Both bones of the lower leg break under it. The doctor sets and splints them straight, then scrubs the wheel-torn skin with carbolic and watches it daily for the redness that would mean losing the race.

• Leg splinted knee to ankle, bedrest then crutches for 7 days
• The wheel-cut skin over the break is dressed daily against festering
• Fever watch: any red streaks up the leg go to the doctor at a run
• /me lies with a splinted leg propped on a crate, counting knots in the ceiling

Recovery 7 days splinted with a doctor and weeks tender after, if it festers untreated, festering legs come off.·Doctor, urgently

You did what every old driver warns against, wrapped the reins around your hand for grip, and when the team surged, the leather stripped the skin off your palm and wrenched two fingers from their joints on its way out. The doctor pops the fingers back, salves the flayed palm, and does not say I told you so aloud.

• Palm flayed and dressed, two fingers splinted, no use of that hand for 6 days
• Dressings changed daily; the palm weeps through them the first 2 days
• You drive one-handed forevermore, reins laid loose across the palm
• /me flexes a bandaged claw of a hand, testing which fingers answer

Recovery 6 days wrapped with a doctor's care, untreated, the palm scars stiff and the fingers set crooked.·Doctor required

The wheel drops into a washout and the box catapults you onto the road ahead. You land on an outflung arm and the bone above the wrist snaps, the road takes some skin from your cheek as interest. The doctor pulls the arm straight over his knee and plasters it while the team is still being caught.

• Forearm in plaster, one-armed at everything for 7 days
• A gravel-burned cheek, scabbing for 4 days
• You watch every washout in the road now like it owes you money
• /me rests a plastered arm on the table, picking gravel scabs with the other hand

Recovery 7 days in plaster set by a doctor, unset, the wrist heals with a permanent misgiving.·Doctor required

The coach heels over and hurls you against the window rail, ribs first. Two of them crack against the brass. The coach rocks back onto its wheels in the end, but your side does not, the doctor binds your chest and sentences you to shallow breathing.

• Two cracked ribs bound in linen, shallow breaths and no lifting for 5 days
• A rail-stripe bruise from armpit to hip
• Getting in and out of any coach is a slow, audible process for 4 days
• /me climbs down from the coach one careful rung at a time, ribs held stiff

Recovery 5 days bound with rest, 7 wincing ones without, watch for fever in the breath.·Doctor required

You brace against the reins with the whole weight of the panicking team on the other end, and the shoulder gives before they do, wrenched half from its socket in one long tearing pull. The doctor works it back and slings the arm; the team, for the record, stopped two miles later on its own.

• Arm slung tight, no reins, ropes, or lifting with it for 4 days
• The shoulder aches deep whenever you raise a coffee cup past your chin
• Deep rein-bruises striped across both palms
• /me eases their slung arm against their chest, palms crossed with bruise lines

Recovery 4 days slung after a doctor seats it, 6 seized-up ones if nobody does.·Doctor required

The side panel bursts against a boulder and the coach turns its own wall into a volley of oak splinters. Most pepper your coat; one the size of a pen-knife buries itself in your forearm. The doctor draws it, flushes the channel with carbolic, and shows you the splinter in a jar as a keepsake.

• A splinter wound in the forearm, drawn, flushed, and bandaged for 4 days
• A dozen lesser splinters worked out by lamplight over the evening
• The arm stiffens around the wound, light duty for 3 days

Recovery 4 days dressed and clean, 6 and a hot swollen arm if the channel sours.·Doctor required

The lurch throws you knee-first into the iron brake lever hard enough to bend your plans for the week. Nothing cracks the doctor can find, but the kneecap swells to twice its ambitions and bends only under formal protest for days.

• A swollen knee, stiff-legged on stairs and coach steps for 4 days
• Kneeling and squatting are out entirely for 3 days
• A bruise in the exact profile of a brake handle, shown on request
• /me straightens a stiff leg out under the table with both hands and a grunt

Recovery 4 days wrapped and favored, 5 if you keep working the box.·Doctor required

The coach bucks you clean off the top into the roadside grass, which is soft, by way of the roadside ditch, which is not. You come up with a bruised hip, a cut brow from a stone, and a view of the coach settling onto its side without you.

• A bruised hip that hitches your stride for 3 days
• A stone-cut brow under a sticking-plaster, scabbing for 3 days
• /me limps along the road collecting scattered luggage, dabbing at their brow

Recovery 3 days of hitch and scab if you rest it, 5 if you keep marching on the sore hip, and watch the brow cut doesn't fester.·Doctor advised

The coach tips, holds, and rocks back, but the roof-rack luggage does not. A brass-cornered trunk descends on you like judgment, corner-first into your ribs, followed by everyone's carpet bags. You are excavated bruised, floured with road dust, and wearing someone's unmentionables on one shoulder.

• A trunk-corner bruise on the ribs, deep breaths ache for 3 days
• Assorted lesser bruises from the baggage that followed
• Another passenger's effects to return, awkwardly, with apologies
• /me hands back a carpet bag to its owner without meeting their eyes

Recovery 3 days for the ribs to quiet down, 4 if you keep loading freight.·Doctor advised

You jump clear as the coach starts to go and would have landed it, too, on level ground, but the road offers a wheel rut instead, and the ankle folds sideways under you with a hot wrench. The coach, for the record, rights itself. You do not.

• A rolled ankle, walk, never sprint, for 3 days
• Wrapped in liniment rags each night
• Climbing the coach box takes an extra beat and a wince for 2 days

Recovery 3 days wrapped and favored, 5 if you stay on your feet all day.·Doctor advised

You keep hold of the team through the whole runaway, a feat that saves the coach and skins both palms in payment, the leather sawing friction-burns across them mile after mile. Come evening your hands are seized into half-fists that beg off buttons, cards, and handshakes alike.

• Both palms rein-burned, gripping anything stings fiercely for 3 days
• Handshakes are agony; you offer the wrist like visiting royalty
• Salve and loose bandages each night for 3 days
• /me holds a coffee cup with their fingertips, palms turned carefully inward

Recovery 3 days salved to close, 5 cracking and weeping if worked bare.·Doctor advised

The coach hammers over the washboard at a dead run, and you with it, teeth clacking, spine stacking, tongue caught once between molars hard enough to draw blood. When the team finally blows out, you climb down with a bitten mouth, a whiplashed neck, and an inner ear that still believes it is moving.

• A bitten tongue, a faint lisp and no hot soup for 2 days
• A stiff neck that turns by way of the shoulders for 2 days
• Ground-sway underfoot for an hour after every ride, 2 days

Recovery 2 days for mouth and neck to make their peace, 3 with long hauls.·Doctor advised

The coach slews to a stop half in the ditch and you step off it into thin air, landing seat-first in the road. The damage is a bruise you can't display in company and a coating of road flour from hat to heels, witnessed by a full complement of passengers.

• A bruised seat, hard benches sting for 2 days
• Dust in every seam, shaken out for days after
• /me beats their hat against their leg, raising a small weather system

Recovery 2 days of tender sitting; the dignity is a longer convalescence.·No doctor needed

You ride out the whole wreck white-knuckled to the driver's rail, boots braced, and step down after with nothing worse than a shoulder wrenched from holding your own weight sideways through the slide. Every passenger inside would trade injuries with you in a heartbeat.

• A mildly wrenched shoulder, sore on high reaches for 2 days
• Fingers that ache from gripping, stiff on the buttons tonight
• /me uncurls their fingers from an imaginary rail, one at a time

Recovery 2 days of soreness and it is behind you.·No doctor needed

You read the wobble in the wheel a moment before it matters and hop down while the hopping is good, taking a stumbling run-out and a barked pair of hands on the landing. Behind you, the coach settles into the ditch with a groan. Your timing draws applause and one accusation of witchcraft.

• Scraped palms that sting in the washbasin for 1 day
• A stumble-bruised shin under one boot
• A reputation for uncanny timing you will be asked to repeat

Recovery A day of stinging palms and it is done.·No doctor needed

The lurch pitches you backward off the seat into the boot, where the government's mail receives you like a stack of stiff pillows. You climb out of the canvas with a bruised elbow and half a dozen letters down your collar, all of which you dutifully return.

• A bruised elbow that knocks on things all day, for 1 day
• Paper cuts in improbable places
• /me fishes a stranger's letter out of their shirt and squints at the address

Recovery A day; the mail, miraculously, also arrives intact.·No doctor needed

The coach slides off the road, tips, and settles gently against the season's biggest haystack, which receives it like an old friend. Inside, you are stacked against the leeward wall with the other passengers, breathless, blinking, and entirely unbroken. You exit through the uphill window like sailors abandoning a polite shipwreck.

• Unhurt, the haystack took the coach's whole argument
• Hay down your collar and in your hat from the climb out
• /me climbs out the coach window and slides down the haystack with strange grace

Recovery Nothing to heal, tip the farmer whose haystack saved the fare.·No doctor needed

The wreck flings you clean over the roadside fence into a fresh-plowed field, where you plow a small furrow of your own through soil soft as risen dough. You stand up from your personal crater wearing half an acre and not one bruise worth naming.

• Unhurt, but soiled to an agricultural degree
• Dirt in your boots, ears, and convictions until bath day
• /me rises from the furrow like something the field grew

Recovery None, the field did the doctoring and asks only laundry in return.·No doctor needed

The coach goes end over end in a thunder of splintering oak, and the bench cushion tears loose and travels with you, arriving beneath you at the precise spot you land. Witnesses find you sitting upright on the cushion in the middle of the road, hat in your lap, amid a hundred yards of scattered wreckage, entirely untouched. The stage line will tell this story longer than you will.

• Utterly unhurt, you rode the cushion out of a cartwheeling coach
• First claim on the salvage as the wreck's only upright survivor
• The driver tells everyone you never even lost hold of your hat
• /me sits on a coach cushion in the open road, dust settling all around

Recovery Nothing to heal, keep the cushion, it has clearly chosen you.·No doctor needed