#gunshot wounds
No really.
Taking the bullet out does nothing to help the person, and if your characters are in the field instead of a hospital, may actually cause more harm than good.
Imagine for a moment that you (for reasons unknown to all) decided to turn your sink on wide open, pick up a handgun, and shoot the pipes under your sink.
Maybe it hit the drain pipe, which would be bad, since all the water coming through the faucet is now dribbling out all over the floor. But even worse would be if it hit the water intake pipe, right? In that case, water under high pressure would be spraying everywhere!
Two bad options if you for some reason shoot your sink:
The vascular system of the human body is essentially one big set of pipes. The drain pipe? Those would be veins—under low pressure, but still very bad to leak from. The water intake pipe? Those would be the arteries—under high pressure and VERY dangerous to puncture.
But back to the sink example. Say you shot the pipes and hit the drain pipe (vein). Now there’s water pouring out onto the floor. Your roommate says “Quick! Wrap your hand around the pipe to hold the water in!” (“Put pressure on the wound!”) And you do! Water is still slipping out from under your hand, but it’s leaking a lot less than before! Right now, you COULD find some duct tape (bandages) and secure the pipe further so you don’t have to keep holding it.
Instead, however, you say to your roommate: “Hold on! I’ve got to find the bullet!” You let go of the pipe (stop putting pressure on the wound) to dig around in the cabinet (body) for the bullet. Seconds, maybe even minutes pass, and that pipe is freely gushing out water the whole time.
Finally, you find it! You pry the bullet out of the wood, hold it up to your roommate, and drop it in a little metal dish with a ‘clink’.
“Job well done,” you tell yourself. “We’re out of the woods now.”
Except that, you know, the pipe is still damaged and gushing water out onto the floor, and the bullet wasn’t actually doing anything harmful inside the cabinet. Also, while you were rummaging around for little Houdini, you weren’t putting pressure on the pipe, so that sink (patient) lost a whole lot of water (blood) that it didn’t need to. Can you imagine how much more it would have been if you’d hit the water intake pipe (artery) instead?
I know what you’re thinking. “But in movies—!!” And I know. But here’s the thing: Hollywood? It’s a bouquet of lies. I’m sorry. I really am.
In fact, even that distinctly bullet-shaped thing you usually see pulled out of people in movies may not always be true. Many times the bullet mushrooms out or becomes malformed. Depending on what that bullet ran into (like bone) it might have even broken into a dozen pieces. Try digging those out of your protagonist!
Now sometimes, but not always, doctors WILL remove the bullet (or fragments of bullet). For example, if they’ve already got the patient in surgery, and AFTER they’ve already repaired any veins, arteries, and organs to the best of their ability. Or if the patient doesn’t need surgery (if it didn’t hit anything major and is just lodged in the muscle or fat) but doctors notice that the bullet or fragment is likely to cause damage if left inside the patient.
More often than not, however, the bullet isn’t doing anything actively damaging while inside the patient, or the removal of the bullet would be more dangerous than leaving it where it is. This is why most bullets don’t get removed at all.
This is true if your characters are at a hospital, but ESPECIALLY if this is a field job. If trained physicians with all the tools at their disposal, blood transfusions, and a sterile environment most likely won’t take the bullet out, then Dave McSide-Character should DEFINITELY not be sticking his filthy, 5-straight-chapters-of-parkour fingers or his I-just-stabbed-a-guy-but-I-wiped-the-blood-off-on-my-pants knife inside the protagonist to fish around for some bullet that isn’t even causing harm. The recommended way to deal with a gunshot wound in the field? Pack it with gauze (or yes, even a filthy we’ve-been-on-the-run-for-two-weeks-in-the-same-clothes t-shirt if that’s all you have. Wound infection is a different post) and keep constant pressure on it.
Remember: stopping the leak in the sink is the most important thing. Not rummaging around in the cabinet for the bullet. Taking it out does literally nothing.
Two perfectly realistic reasons why you might have a character take the bullet out:
Now, sometimes, depending on the characters or the world you’re writing in, this might be different. In some instances, you might want to write the lead-scavenger-hunt scene in!
The first reason is if they just don’t know
And that’s really important when writing realistically. Not everyone is a professional in emergency wound care. Most people get all their knowledge of emergency medicine from Grey’s Anatomy and House M.D.
- If your character has any medical training? Probably don’t do it
- If your character has any military or police training? Some know, some don’t, so writing it either way is believable. It’s a toss-up, but they DO have more experience with gunshot wounds (either personally, witnessed, or in training videos and word of mouth)
- If your character is a 17-year-old art student who saw blood for the very first time two chapters ago? Well now that character might just try digging for the bullet
And hey, maybe they’re like “I’m gonna get the bullet out!” but another character (the one who was shot, another character in the room, maybe even a 911 operator) steps in and says “No, no, no! Just put pressure on it!”
But regardless, injured characters in movies are always suddenly on the mend after the bullet is taken out. The vitals start to rise, they aren’t gasping for breath, their hand closes firmly around the love-interest’s hand, etc. And this doesn’t happen. Regardless of what your characterdoes, the rules of biology are still in play.
In the end, though, that bullet’s just minding its own business in there. The #1 priority is fixing the damage it caused on the way in.
The second reason is if the bullet is special
This is more for the SciFi/Fantasy writers.
If your character is a werewolf and was just shot by a silver bullet which is stopping their healing process and is slowly killing them? Yeah, take it out
If the bullet is actually some sort of tiny robot designed to burrow into their organs one by one? Yeah, take it out.
If the bullet had a spell or curse placed on it? Yeah, take it out.
If they need to get transported up to the med bay, but the bullet would cause some kind of issue with the transporters? Yeah, take it out.
But in all of these examples, the bullet has to be inherently dangerous. For normal humans with normal bullets, its just a hunk of lead.
Hope this helped some of you action writers out there!
Good luck and good writing!
Disclaimer: In the event that you or someone you know has been shot, the best thing to do for them is call for an ambulance and follow the instructions provided by the operator. This post is intended to give accurate writing advice to authors and script writers, but I am not a medical professional. While I do believe that the research that I’ve done on this topic is factually accurate, it should not be taken as actual medical advice.
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bullet wounds and safehouses | timinette
word count: +1.4k
summary: lovely wasn’t it? sleeping in your best friend’s dad’s bed with said best friend, who you have feelings for.
a/n: i have no words.
ao3|wattpad|prompts|masterlist
Marinette swore to herself she was going to kill Tim later.
It was his fault they had ended up in this awkward situation (certainly not hers at all), and calling it ‘awkward’ was the understatement of the century.
Currently, the two of them were stuck in a relatively secure safe house surrounded by Gotham’s most dangerous criminals. And that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was that they had to spend the night with only one bed. There wasn’t even a couch that one of them could use. Just a large king-sized bed, that, Marinette was a hundred per cent sure had been used by Bruce and Selina several times for… certain situations.
Lovely wasn’t it? Sleeping in your best friend’s dad's bed with said best friend, who you have feelings for.
How did they end up here again?
Everything was normal; the criminals, the fighting, the sound of gunshots. It was completely standard in the lives of the vigilantes Ladybird and Red Robin. They were known for their witty banter, and yet, despite denying it, the entirety of Gotham’s criminal population thought they were dating.
But back to the point.
Ladybird smirked under her mask as she knocked out a particularly strong man. “Not so strong now, are we?”
Red Robin groaned from where he was repeatedly punching someone. “Can’t you think of something different? You’ve said that literally sixty times tonight—”
He was cut off abruptly by Ladybird’s loud scream.
“Oh my god,” he said quickly, rushing over to her, knocking out a few people on the way. “Oh my god— is that blood?”
Neither of them noticed the criminals they were fighting a few seconds ago dispersing silently.
“No, you dumbass,” Ladybird said, clutching the bullet wound in her stomach. “It's ketchup. Of course, it’s blood, what else were you expecting?”
“Holy shit,” Red Robin breathed, coming back to his senses. “Okay, okay— Bird, you need to keep pressing that wound, let me just contact Oracle.”
He switched his comm on. “Hello? Oracle? You there—”
The only answer he received was static. Which, for your information was impossible, because unless someone was holding some sort of scrambler nearby, it was supposed to work perfectly.
“Red,” Ladybird groaned, still clutching her wound. “Red, you need to look—”
“Just— just give me a few seconds okay?” Red Robin fumbled with his comm. “Something’s wrong—”
“Red,” Ladybird said, and the emphasis in her tone made him turn around.
At the very least 30 criminals stood in front of them, each one armed with a weapon.
“Shit,” Red Robin said. “This is not good.”
“Yeah?” asked Ladybird, sarcastically. “How did you know?”
Helping her stand up, Red Robin sent her a reassuring smirk, even though she couldn’t see it. “Well, let’s see, we have about fifteen people armed with knives, twelve with guns and the last three are the last three have machetes. I think.”
Ladybird stared at Red Robin like he was insane. “I was being sarcastic.”
Red Robin blinked. “Oh.”
The criminals, who were silent for all this time began to close the circle around them even tighter, weapons flashing under the moonlight.
“Anyway,” Red Robin stretched the word out, wrapping Ladybird’s arms around his neck. “I think it’s time we dip, don’t you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer before launching into the air.
As soon as they were an appropriate distance away from the criminals, the comms began working again, Oracle’s voice ringing frantically.
“Red Robin? Ladybird? I swear if you two are making out somewhere—” she muttered.
“We’re alive, thanks for asking, Oracle.” Red Robin said dryly, readjusting Ladybird in his arms. Her wound was still gushing blood, but not as much as before, and he didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
“Oh thank god,” Oracle said, and the sound of typing on the other side was heard. “What happened?”
“A bunch of criminals with a scrambler happened,” said Ladybird, her voice slightly shaky. She sounded like she was going to pass out.
“And,” Red Robin said, running faster when he saw some criminals following them. “She got shot. We also have about ten criminals on our tail. Coming to the Cave isn’t an option here.”
“Got it,” said Oracle. “The nearest safehouse is a couple of roofs over, but I should warn you, it’s the one that the Big Bat and the Cat used.”
The last part of the sentence went unheard by Red Robin, the wind roaring in his ears as he increased his speed to the safehouse. Ladybird wasn’t speaking much, and he had a sinking feeling that she had passed out.
Landing on the roof with a soft thump, Red Robin quickly slipped through the hatch and into the small, but nicely decorated, safehouse.
“Are you in?” Oracle’s voice echoed over the comms.
“Yep,” Red Robin said, quickly looking for medical supplies. “I need to fix Marinette’s wound. We’ll spend the night here — I’ll call you in the morning.”
Quickly turning to Ladybird, Tim pulled off his mask and pulled off Marinette’s earrings. Tikki wouldn’t appreciate it, but they could talk about that later.
Detransforming in a flash of pink light, Marinette lay on the floor, face pale and red blood escaping from her abdomen. Although there was pressure on the wound, blood still gushed out from it.
Using his medical knowledge, Tim put the dressing on Marinette’s wound, waiting for her to regain consciousness. Hopefully, she hadn’t lost too much blood, because otherwise, things were going to get complicated.
After he dressed the wound, she seemed to be breathing easier, her eyelids fluttering.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Tim put Marinette’s earrings back on and waited for Tikki to appear.
She did so in a few seconds, opening her mouth to scold him until she noticed Marinette. Instead, all she said was, “What can I do?”
“Go to the Cave,” Tim said, lifting Marinette up easily, to put her on the bed. “Tell everyone we’re fine and, if possible, a few more supplies? I don’t know how much more we’ll need.”
“Of course.”
She was gone within seconds.
Now all that was left was to wait for Marinette to regain consciousness and convince her to spend the night here. She really shouldn’t be prancing around rooftops in her current state.
“So,” Tim said conversationally, drinking his crudely made coffee. “How do you feel?”
Also taking a sip of her coffee, Marinette looked at Tim over the rim of her cup. “Like I’m dying, but hey, that’s nothing new.”
Staring at her with narrowed eyes, Tim finally stood up. “Bed.”
His statement left no room for question, but then, Marinette was never one to follow the rules.
Marinette also stood up, albeit a lot more slowly. “No.”
The two of them stared at each other, once again, from opposite sides of the kitchen, and Marinette felt her heart beat faster as Tim’s blue eyes stared into her own.
His hair was beautifully messed up, standing up artfully, probably the result of him running his hands through his hair. His worry over her was flattering and frankly, unhealthy for her heart, but that was only because she was his best friend, right? Marinette would have done the same for him in any other situation.
As their stare progressed, Tim’s eyes softened as he strode towards Marinette in a few large steps.
“You,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands. “Have no idea how scared I was.”
The abrupt change in his manner jarred Marinette to her bones, but she wasn’t about to complain, not when Tim was the closest to her he had been in months.
For whatever reasons, Tim had been less affectionate with her in the recent months. Marinette didn’t know why, and none of his brothers would tell her why, just saying he came to a “realisation.”
That didn’t really tell her much.
So, she wasn’t complaining, when he moved even closer to her, a hair’s breadth of air between the two of them.
“You know,” Tim said, whispering now. “I thought you were going to die.”
His eyes looked a little glassy as he stared at her.
Marinette didn’t know if it was because she was delirious or because she was just stupid, but the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “You’re so pretty."
And he was.
Black hair curling at the ends and deep, vibrant blue eyes, Marinette was smitten. But she really didn’t mean to tell him that.
Tim blinked in response to her statement. "You— you think I'm pretty?”
Marinette panicked, thinking of something that sounded pretty. “I didn’t say that! I said you’re so petty.”
There was a moment of silence.
Narrowing his eyes at her, Tim said, “I can’t decide if I want to throw you off a bridge or kiss you.”
Marinette shot him a dazzling smile, pain from before forgotten. “Can I pick?”
