Q; When Picard was hit by an arrow in his arm a while back, even after Beverly had fixed him up he still had to sport a sling for a while, yet here after he's knifed in the chest, fer Chrissakes, he's up and about virtually straight away. How come?
A; I have speculated before that the sling was just to accent his mortality on the occasion when he wore it, but it occurs to me now that I may have been wrong. An arrow in the upper arm is going to produce muscle injury, which will cause pain every time the arm is flexed, so it would make sense to keep it in a sling for a while, even if due to advances in medicine it would only need to be for a short while when compared to the time it would take to effect recuperation today. Judging by the angle at which Beverly and her team sealed Picard's chest wound, I would conjecture that the knife hit the sternum (ahem, chest bone) and was deflected upwards towards the throat. The injury could therefore be assessed as being superficial in the sense that it was little more than a flesh wound. Certainly, although he would experience soreness and I would imagine some stiffness in his chest muscles, there would be nothing to stop Picard from resuming his duties in, as we saw, a very short space of time.
It made me think a bit, this show. We see various keep fit facilities in this episode we saw the racquet-ball court but we never see anybody in the gym. Why not, I wonder?
Incidentally, was it not a tad unlikely that Picard would be dumb enough to leave a whacking great knife like that lying around in the first place? He's sharing his room with a guy already established as being a few coupons short of a toaster. Would it not have been better to be safe not sorry?
The Best of Both Worlds Part
Two Family Brothers Suddenly
Human Remember Me Legacy Reunion Future Imperfect Final
Mission The Loss Data's Day The Wounded Devil's Due Clues
First Contact Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree Qpid
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Redemption