In the updated version hits have been replaced with wounds to avoid confusion. So it would be 2 wounds of 20hp per wound. If an attack does 19 damage, he would take 19 damage but wouldn’t lose a wound. If he took 1 more point of damage, he would lose a wound and would need to roll on the wound chart to see the effect of losing a wound. If he loses both wounds, he dies.

There are also weapons that do wounds damage and will ignore hp and just cause wounds instead. These types of weapons are particularly nasty.

The wounds system adds to the lethality of the game, as sustaining a single wound can often result in debilitating effects and even death. Moral of the story is: avoid combat if you can.

Hope this helps. Apologies if you were already across this.