Ruptured spleen will do it. It can be life threatening and takes a bit of recovery.
Burn injuries will work. Burns take a long time to heal. Many patients are at risk for infection and respiratory damage, which means a long hospitalization.
I know you mentioned that this guy needs to be beaten up, but maybe after being beaten up, he could be doused in lighter fluid and have a match thrown on him.
A non-hospital suing accident - that really happened.
Patient was catheterised while in a coma for a week. Patient came round and after a day of recovery the catheter was removed. Still groggy, the patient tried to get to the toilet without ringing for a nurse. The resulting fall and cracked eye socket caused another week’s stay. Same patient had already been given the wrong medication - which caused the coma - but that won’t work for your story.
Your guy might re-open a wound or cause a new wound. If it happens close to his release it could at least double his stay.
Heck, conflate several of the earlier posts and have him fall and douse himself in boiling water (trying to get to himself a cup of coffee?) the burns on top of existing injuries would take ages to heal!
How about pneumonia as a complication? Shallow breathing because of the broken ribs turns a common or garden respiratory infection into pneumonia. I’m pretty certain that would keep him in hospital for a while. When I had pneumonia last year it took three goes and three weeks to find the right antibiotic.
As a side suggestion arising from the situation of staying in hospital for a whole month could you play with your character continually anticipating he’ll be out in a couple of days only for the damned doctors to forbid him to leave?
Consider an injury to the pancreas. Pancreatitis can be caused by a beating such as you describe, and can produce any level of severity you choose. The pancreas produces digestive enzymes, and if they get loose within your abdomen, all hell can break loose.
Oh man, you guys are absolutely terrific! My mind’s buzzing here.
The burn suggestions won’t work for reasons related to ryan’s excellent (if a tad disturbing for his being so knowledgable!) post: the thugs don’t want him dead, they want him to pay back his gambling debt, to put the fear of God into him, and to teach him a bit of a lesson while they’re at it. The beating is a bit harsher than usual because the young man delivering said beating is trying to prove himself to his ‘supervisor’, and goes further than intended. He’s also desperate to look good because he’s actually worked his way ‘inside’ as part of a plea bargain with the DA’s office… yeah it’s probably sounding silly, but hey. I ain’t going for War and Peace, it’s basically primetime TV drama-level melodrama.
Soooooo the point is that they don’t want to kill the victim, ergo no dousing or intentional life-threatening damage like a stomping.
I’m beginning to get the picture that a series of middling-level injuries would do the trick, and possibly even a skull fracture (without brain damage) to use t-bonham@scc.net and dinoboy’s ideas. I’d love to go with the back idea, but I’m not sure how his back would get hurt in a regular punch-up.
I also like Springtime for Spacers’s pneumonia idea (though I wouldn’t want it to be life-threatening pneumonia, just enough to cause the docs concern; is this possible?) and especially the addendum re: the character’s getting pissed off with the doctors’ continuing to postpone his release. This is actually very in-character for this guy. He’s not a good patient, to say the least.
Finally, I can’t do ruptured spleen 'cause I already gave that to another character more recently. Heh. Yeah, it’s been a tough year for my poor cast.
You guys have been extraordinarily helpful. If anyone can think of more specific injuries, bring 'em on!
A minor spinal fracture during a beatdown could happen if the thug threw your anti-hero against a dumpster, or something else with hard protrusions that would not feel good on your spine.
Ooh, that’s an excellent point, thanks! The beating occurs near a car, so I wonder if getting smashed against the mirror or something. But a Dumpster would work too.
Note: viewers should not try this at home. 
Does the character have to be in a full-fledged hospital? When my wife had an abscessed colon while on vacation, she only spent 10 days in the hospital, but it was two more weeks before she was allowed to fly home. She spent that time in bed at home with relatives she was visiting (and daily visits from a nurse), but if she’d been in a town with no relatives, she’d have needed an assisted living situation. (We associate those with elderly people, but younger people often spend a month or two while recovering from serious injury). She spent another two or three weeks in bed at home before she could even think about getting around by herself.
This kind of injury could potentially result from a kick to the gut, and any injury to the GI tract has a very high risk of infection even when the doctors do everything perfectly.
As another example an assisted living situation: a friend’s father fell off a roof while doing construction work and injured himself pretty badly. Part of the skull and brain were damaged in addition to a few other broken limbs. Many of the symptoms from the brain injury were similar to stroke results. He spent a couple of weeks in a hospital and a couple of months in assisted living while he did rehab to finish healing and retrain his brain to walk. (I’m woefully short on technical details).
Check out Cecil’s column on the home page (the one about playing bongos and pissing blood). He mentions rhabdomylosis (sp?) can cause temporary kidney malfunction/failure. that might keep him in the hospital for a while…
What I was thinking is that any pneumonia is life threatening if the patient doesn’t do what the doctors say In my case I didn’t have to be hospitalised, just stayed at home taking my antibiotics and listening to my lungs crackling but because of his other injuries I think the doctors may well keep him in.
Depending on how long you want the guy to have to deal with rehab, a severely broken leg could perhaps do the trick. I have a friend who broke his leg skiing, and by “break” I mean “shattered” and by skiing… well, he was skiing, actually! They call it a boot-top fracture, because while his foot stayed still (ski caught in a rut), his leg went forward and the breaks are at the top of where his ski boot was. He’s in his 40s. My friend was in the hospital for nearly 3 weeks, and bed-ridden for very much longer, because he essentially had no functioning leg bones and needed multiple pins and metal plates to try and hold things back together again. He had pain relievers (morphine), but was otherwise conscious except during the surgeries. Time-wise, the multiple breaks (it was described as little bits of bone and a visible gap!) won’t work for you; it took about 6 months before he could put his weight on it, and a year+ after the accident, he still can’t run, but does physio 3 times a week and if you were to take another X-ray now, you’d still describe the leg as broken.
That said, I think you could adapt something like this for your story.
I imagine a nice swift kick/stumble against a fence/creative situation in a gambling beat-down could lead to a similar break. If he also suffered several other injuries (broken ribs, concussion, etc), which would delay your guy’s ability to start rehab on a badly damaged leg (pins/plaques inserted), then he might be kept in hospital longer to recover from the other injuries before he could leave from the leg. This would leave him with a limp, or at least a limp until he is fully healed, and some interesting scars, both of which I assume you could use in your plot somehow. The downside to this is figuring out the severity of the break you’d need to have so that your character can be back up and walking around within the timeline you’ve established, and you’d need to write in a cast/removable brace for some time after the event.
Other idea:
My sister had an idopathic case of pancreatitis, which resulted in a 10-day hospital stay, but I’m sure it could have lasted longer. She couldn’t eat anything, and it took a couple of days before she was even allowed to suck on ice cubes, to allow the pancreas to heal without being stimulated into producing enzymes. Wiki indicates that an acute case could be triggered by trauma to the body, particularly the abdomen (a well-placed punch or six?). This was 3+ years ago, and she has had a single attack since, which lasted only a couple days, but otherwise it has no long-term impact on her health (that we know of!) Treatment is pain relief, morphine most likely, IV fluids and feeding via a tube through the nose (contraindicated if your character has suffered facial fractures, so that could be a problem).
NOTE: IANAD, and these are just scenarios based on actual experiences of my friend and sister, not any actual medical knowledge!
I’m sorry I can’t spend the time to review all the particular plot requirements of the character, but I’ll throw in my suggestions.
You’ll want your goons to stay away from spinal, organ, infection, and brain injuries/beatings. They are too unpredictable in terms of doing just the right amount of damage to hurt the guy badly but not enough to kill him. And the type of people who do that kind of work are not exactly known as “precisionists”.
A burn might work, but again there’s the risk of subsequent infection which introduces unpredictability. The goons could knock him out or hold him down, then run a tiger torch up and down his back for a minute. Alternately they could burn both his hands and/or feet (see below); this could also be done chemically. But it’s messy, requires equipment/chemicals, and could result in the goons getting burnt themselves during the process.
I’d go for serious damage to the appendages - both left and right together. Damage to arms and legs (especially that which can be done manually) is pretty non-life threatening, yet quite debilatating to the victim. The reason I say target both left and right at once is that for most daily tasks you can use one leg or arm and get by while the other heals. With one broken leg you can use crutches to hobble around using your good leg. With one arm in a sling you can use you good arm to brush your teeth, dress yourself, and use the microwave.
But with TWO broken legs, you’ll be stuck in a wheelchair for a while, if you’re let out of the hospital at all. With BOTH arms in casts you’ll need someone else to feed you and wipe your ass, even if you can walk. With multiple broken limbs you’ll need rehab, especially for legs you couldn’t put weight on for several weeks. But it all depends on the severity of the break…
… clean or compound fractures are serious and need casts for sure. But they’re not that easy to “perform in the field”. Your goons might need some blocks and hammers (like in the movie Misery) to be sure the job is done right. Using heavy machinery like a car drive-over is again too unpredictable. Your best best would be for the goons to use some nasty joint manipulations on the victim… preferably after he’s been KOed or held down by others to make it quick and easy. The thing with these holds is that they don’t actually break the bones, rather they tear up the joints between them… which can be worse depending on the type of hold used. I’d suggest twisting holds as opposed to straight holds. A straight elbow hyper extention does damage but isn’t nearly as serious as some of the shoulder cranks out there. A heelhook will severely tear cartillage and mucscle attachments in the knee; it’s considered one of the most dangerous submission holds in grappling and takes a long time to heal; it can end the career of a pro-athlete if twisted to completion. You can find videos of all kinds of such joint manipulations online.
I’d suggest all 10 of the victims fingers/thumbs broken at multiple joints with pliers as well as both his wrists. Better yet severly break/tear up both legs as well as one arm so he can’t use a non-motorised wheelchair. You could also try breaking his jaw in several places by a good stomping requireing it to be wired shut to heal and the victim fed a liquid diet in hospital for a few weeks. But again make sure your goons just stomp him so as to break the jaw, not damage the brain (if that’s possible).
Darn you! That was going to be my suggestion!
Pneumonia is good because it can range from being fairly minor to deadly, so you can make it last as long or as short as you want, and be just as serious as you want. And it’s such a common disease that you wouldn’t really be introducing some kind of complicated new plot element or something that needs a lot of explanation.
I like the idea of combining it with the broken ribs. As SfS said, they could explain the development of the pneumonia, and the coughing from the pneumonia could hinder the healing of the ribs. And staying flat on his back from the other injuries could also make it harder for the lungs to drain. (AFAIK)
Ultimately, I think that having multiple injuries of a fairly ordinary nature combined with pneumonia could easily let you keep him in the hospital for a month without mucking up the plot with all sorts of complicated situations and explanations.
Thanks a million to everyone! If someone gets some lightbulb, I’ll be glad to hear it. But otherwise I’ll use a melange of what y’all have given me.
As I continue to go through the old installments and re-edit them, I’ll be slipping in the references to the victim’s newly harsh injuries, and will probably go with a combo platter of the abovementioned suggestions, including the pneumonia induced by the broken ribs and the double injury to the guy’s legs. (Whew. I’m glad I had the forethought to indicate that he’s having trouble recuperating in more recent episodes. And last month he was in a car crash, so he’s even more screwed than before.)
mmmiiikkkeee gets extra points for being so very detailed and thorough and also because he scares the crap out of me because I now suspect he himself is a mob enforcer. 
Many many thanks to all!
Introduce a new character: Have Frank Drebin visit him once a week as necessary.
I think you gotta go to some kind of infection. Bone breaks might keep someone immobile, but not necessarily in the hospital. The state of inurance these days means there is extraordinary pressure to get someone out of a hospital bed and back to home – or anywhere else.
Other random thoughts:
If the character is extremely rich, and paying out of very deep pockets the hospital might happily let him stay.
Is it possible to move the character to some kind of rehab center and let things play out there? Or coming into such a place several times a week for PT?
Or at home with visiting nurses?
I know that the OP isn’t thrilled with staph infection, but it’s very believable, and can be as trivial or lifethreatening as needed. Drug allergies or interactions can be interesting, too. The last time I was in the hospital for a boil/abcess, I developed two new antibiotic allergies. If I hadn’t known what to watch for, I wouldn’t have called the nurses’ station about 30 minutes after a fresh antibiotic IV bag was hung. Yep, I was able to take the drug for a few days, and then I broke out in spots and itchinesses. I did this TWICE in a week. My doctor was thrilled, just thrilled. I’ll be glad to tell of this in more detail if you want.
The pneumonia idea is good, too. Your poor [del]vict[/del] character can be as awake and aware as you need him to be.
Lastly, he could have a previously unknown medical condition. Diabetics are known as slow healers, and having complications. Yeah, yeah, you want all of the problems to be based on his poor decisions, but I think that you could still work in some diabetic problems.
Multilevel vertebral fusion or diskectomy.
Multiple leg fracture, in traction.
Crohn’s disease… er… not so likely to result from beating.
Skull fracture.
Liver damage.
My nephew was in a car accident a couple years ago, and between the trauma center, regular hospital room and rehab hospital, he was in for almost a month.
He broke both legs (had to have a rod installed in one), his right arm, most of the fingers in his right hand (pins set in the fingers to straighten them out). A tear in his liver, spinal fracture, laid his scalp back so you could see his skull. Broke the orbit of his eye, broke his upper jaw in three places (they had to put in what looked like braces, only they were attached to his gums). They missed treating the broken ankle altogether. He may still have to have that fused.
I think most of these injuries could be caused by a baseball bat. The injured party would never be quite the same, though.
StG