Finding the Right Healthcare Provider After a Heroic Gun Fight

You've traded thrilling gunshots with your enemies and your body is looking less like a temple and more like the Reichstag in the summer of '45. Time to get patched up. But who can help save your life by removing bullets from your body and taping bandages over your chest? You shouldn't have waited to choose a doctor!

With the Yakuza running this city, vampire clans battling for the night, and shadowy government agents shooting futuristic machine guns through doors it is only a matter of time until you need urgent medical attention. Choosing the right healthcare provider can be as critical to your health outcomes as preventative care such as bullet proof vests under your shirt or special kung fu moves that allow you to avoid projectiles.

Butlers

They say accidents happen closest to home. Gun fights also happen closest to home, which can be convenient if you happen to live in a mansion. If you have a butler, this guy knows his stuff. Give him a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some tweezers and he'll be plucking a bowl full of lead out of your body in no time. As an added bonus, you're already home, so the healing period of one to two hours for multiple gunshots can be spent relaxing where you're most comfortable.

Hot Babes You Rescued

You saved her life, now it's her turn to save your life. This bodacious hot-body may not have medical experience, but she knows her way around some cotton swabs which she can dab very effectively at your bloody holes. Be sure to look stoic while she is dipping iodine into your entry wounds. Flex your muscles a little and if she asks you if it hurts you always need to say, "No." Then, just at sunrise, grab her and start doing it with her in the dusty hideout because she is romantically involved with you now. This will dramatically increase your chances of survival.

Scientists

If you have suffered a particularly serious injury, such as 100 or more gunshots or a full-body explosion, then you may wish to seek out a scientist for medical assistance. Scientists always have a secret project or a sinister corporate backer that can save your life, but at a price. They may turn you into a robot. They may give you gorilla legs or a glowing circle of birth control in your chest. They may digitize you and put you into a TV screen. The good news is that you're still alive. Was it worth it? Not for us to say.

Veterinarians

This is not common knowledge, but Veterinarians are by far the most skilled medical professionals at treating bullet wounds. Owing to their experience taking a dog's butt temperature and wrestling angry cats on a metal table, they know just how to patch up 5.56mm in-and-out bullet wounds. They are especially skilled at dealing with injuries caused by supernatural forces. Nothing can do damage these guys can't heal. Not a werewolf's claws, not a mummy's life-draining hands, and not a fallen angel's black sword. Also very effective if you develop parvo.

Yourself

You would be surprised what you can do with a swig of whiskey and a knife. Arm injuries in particular can be safely operated upon in a bathroom or motel room. Sterilize with more whiskey. Take whiskey for two to three hours following surgery. If bleeding continues, light gunpowder in wound and then administer further whiskey.

Chinese Traditional Healers

Not just for kung fu injuries or removing vampire curses. Practitioners of Chinese action medicine often keep unusual herbs and powerful potions in stock that can heal your wounds much more quickly. You will need someone to translate for the cantankerous Chinese healer or, if you speak hilarious Chinese gibberish, you can respond to him in English like Han Solo talking to Chewbacca. He most often can be found in his herbalist shop, irritated by your injuries, but many Chinese healers also maintain offices in the back of Chinese restaurants.

Those providers will help you, but there are some doctors to be avoided a tall costs. It turns out the first person most people would turn to for medical help might be the last person you should go to after a heroic gun battle.

Emergency Room Doctors

They will want to stand over you and call it. Even if you do not die, you will be in a hospital for days, allowing the remorseless killers who put you in the hospital to find you and finish you off.

Battlefield Medics and Soldiers

Avoid the red cross on the helmet. Corpsmen and assisting soldiers have the worst outcomes of any medical practitioners. They will methodically diagnose your injuries and go to heroic lengths to try to save your life, but they will never save your life. These guys are charlatans. Sure, they can spot your wounds and put all sorts of medicines and forceps to work. They can have somebody hold you down and cut open your body with a knife to get at something. But you're dead if you need these people to help you. They never save anybody.

It may not be fun to think about these things when you're still strapping on smoke grenades and extra magazines of ammo, but making an informed decision about your medical care might make the difference between dying in a hospital or recovering in hours in the back of a noodle restaurant.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)