Each beat of her heart pushed the throb of a headache into her eyes, the back of her neck. Jaz wanted a doctor, some painkillers, a scalding hot shower, and a bottle of wine. Cheap, box wine would be fine, even. She didn't want to be here, watching this nastiness, this aptly described 'unpleasant' business. Because it was, Lincoln was right. She winced when he did out of sympathy pain, a jerking shudder running goosebumps down her arms. How he was doing this on sheer strength of will was astounding. When she'd sliced her forearm open on-site once, she'd needed local anesthetic before she'd even considered letting stitches near her. And here was Lincoln just. Dealing with it. So, she'd deal with it too.
It was worth looking again when he was done though, see if she'd missed some oxy or something in her harried search.
"I'm Jaz. Jazmine," she clarified. The sheer amount of blood left a metallic sheen on her tongue if she breathed too deep. It tasted like how hot copper wire smelled.
Her hand hurt.
On her best days, "opinionated" was maybe the politest term Jaz knew would be used to describe her. But right now she was blanking, put on the spot. What was her favorite color? Really, the only time her words were every used as a distraction was when a friend was sad and needed mindless chatter to fill the void. And typically, Jaz just filled it with dating advice that more or less amounted to 'dump him.' Lincoln needed frivolity and that-- Jaz had worked her whole life to make sure people listened to her. Absorbed her ideas and didn't take them for granted. It was a surprisingly hard request to fulfill.
She talked about what she knew.
About chiller units and how water-cooled systems were so much more energy efficient. About airflow in office buildings versus hotels, about how more buildings should invest in central heating and cooling. How there wasn't much difference between a car's engine and a gas turbine. About how satisfying it was to take things apart just to put them back together better, smarter. The litany left very little room for Lincoln to get a word in. Which was the point, she hoped.
The more she talked about work, the easier it got to watch Lincoln stitch his leg up. Sopping up blood became automatic, pain in her hand present but shoved to a corner of her mind. The furrow in her brow shifted from agonized concern to studious curiosity; the tension in her posture melted out. Sharp eyes studied Lincoln's movements. Human bodies were messy. Between different people being susceptible to different illnesses and personalities that jumped all over the place, Jaz had never been interested in medicine, in the body as a whole. But broken down they were just... parts. And his leg simply needed repairing.
Jaz found herself considering the tensile strength of the thread, the amount of stress pulling the skin together created. With less surface area, would the pressure inside build? Gas tankers had pressure valves that released when the PSI built up; what was the equivalent for a leg? Would it explode without it, like a tanker might?
She'd gone quiet.
While one hand wiped when it seemed right, when Lincoln instructed, the other pressed a thumb to her chin as Jaz hyper focused. He was so efficient, and it was a trait she valued above most others. The way he did it had a certain sort of beauty to it, an ease that suggested he'd done it before.
Her hand didn't hurt right now.
"Where did you learn how to do this?" Jaz murmured, contemplative, leaning closer than was maybe necessary, intent on memorizing his style. The threading was kind of like aluminum fins, criss-crossed and fine. "Army? Marines?" The military was the only discipline she could fathom having the discipline to withstand the pain and still be orderly about his stitches. Talking to Lincoln, rather than at him, was maybe not the way to keep his mind occupied. But Jaz had an innate need to gather information. To file it away for later, sorted and neat. She had about a billion questions ready to pour out.