Gatling gun injuries & most importantly evidence
Hi, I've had a dig through the injuries to order tag and have a pretty good grip on the type of injuries I want but having have googled every variation I can think of around Gatling guns, ballistics, gun shot wounds, historic injuries I still can't make sense of the part about how someone would tell how the victim got injured. All I seem to get is wiki, rubber band guns! and modern phalanx type weapons...and I need to know what if anything is unique or unusual about a wound from approx 1865. Sadly I'm not expert on guns to start with so although I've got a good understanding of the damage from them I'm lost with ballistics and ammunition types etc
I did find some good resources on survivability, here http://www.healthboards.com/boards/general-health/738635-gunshot-wound-shoulder-year-ago-still-experience-frequent-high-amounts-pain.html and here http://www.eorthopod.com/content/urban-surgeons-share-their-knowledge-of-gunshot-wound-treatment so I can be pretty sure his survival is not too out there.
The scenario is that the hero of the hour is hit in the right hip and left shoulder as he throws himself in front of someone else to save them when someone opens up with a Gatling gun. He's early 30's fairly fit and healthy but not a professional solder - actually he's more the support/technologist of the group and was born late 17th century to impoverished parents so the first few years were rough/short on food and amenities - he only got to eat regularly and sleep warm when someone discovered just how bright he was and essentially bought him off his father.
I'm wanting severe but not immediately lethal injuries - it's a time travel scenario - so he'll be getting modern top of the line treatment within the next few hours but there will be some level of delay as there will be an argument about the risk of evidence from his injuries tipping the authorities off about the group of time travellers. I've also realised how much it's going to hurt the poor guy when they need to strip his clearly not 21th century clothing off.
I'm also thinking that major damage to those areas would be enough to convince the pseudo Victorian leaders of the group that he's done for - it's down to a junior member who comes from the late 20th century to convince them he can be saved...she may or may not be rather fond of him and have a very personal reason for putting his wellbeing above the integrity of the project they are involved in ;)
The intention is for the injuries to very nearly kill him and require multiple surgeries/long and painful recovery with no guarantee that he'll regain full or even near full use of his arm/walk again. Having ongoing problems that require him to keep his arm in a sling and/or walk with a cane/be in pain is totally fine as there is a definite need down the line for someone involved in the incident where he was injured to be feeling really, really guilty.
The big questions.
Would a Gatling gun at moderate range be enough to break his hip/top of femur and smash his shoulder joint and upper arm without simply pulverising the whole area and ripping out the femoral and /or brachial arteries? The arm injury can be from one or two bullets.
With a reasonable level of care from a competent 1st aider and a certain amount of luck is he likely to survive long enough to get through a spacetime anomaly and into a hospital? As far as the scene is playing in my head he should be treated within 12 to 24 hours....hmmm...would that be long enough for infection to start to set in? If that is too long I can slide things down to about 2 or 3 hours with a little juggling or out and out threats from the one who's trying to save him and pas on the infection thing/deal with it post operatively.
Would the calibre and/or type of bullet be likely to be recognisable as out of place when he goes into emergency surgery in a modern hospital? By this I mean, is the concern that evidence from is injuries might give them away a reasonable one? Due to the origin of the character who's on his side it's fairly easy to keep this from being an out and out police investigation - MI6 ID can get you a long way but if it's so out of place that a military trained surgeon would look at the bullets and go WTF I may need to think of a way to cover that up.
Is it reasonable that he'll need to spend the next several months to a year or more recovering before he can even consider rejoining the time travellers in what can be an active lifestyle and that by that point he will still be in significant pain at times/still be showing definite disability (in their lexicon, he'll be crippled/lame)
He's one of my main characters and I kind of want him to have ongoing physical and mental (ptsd/depression) issues from this to remind them all of the consequences of certain actions/policies and the fact that only one of them put his life above their self imposed rules is intended to forge a link between those two that will be relevant later.