Alex was already ignoring Damon's minimalist attitude toward his wound. After all, who was the paramedic here? Good that Alex had brought his backpack with him. The only thing he lacked just then was a nice sterile field he could stitch that up with. Even with Damon's healing powers, that wound was open and couldn't stay that way for long.
As discreetly as possible, Alex went to his bag again. The wound needed cleaning out first, but Damon didn't need to feel that. He capped a syringe of Lidocaine with an appropriate needle. After a moment's thought, he took out a sterile pad for the bed. As he slid this onto the mattress, he began to talk.
"I used to actually know a girl called Marijane," he told Damon as he uncapped the needle. Gloved hands touched the surface around the wound. "You're going to feel a little stick, then a sting or a burn." With that, Alex began to put the needle into the skin and inject some Lidocaine. "Anyway," he continued and began to inject several areas with the stuff. "She was literally named after the plant. Her mom would come pick her up from school in one of those VW buses. She wore her hair in braided pig tails, the works. I had two classes with her and sat behind her in one of them."
After the Lidocaine was gone and the surface was covered in holes, some of them bleeding a little, Alex took a sterile wipe and wiped away excess blood as he went on. "I used to take her hair down from the pigtails because she said she hated them, so she let me take them out and she'd lean back and let me comb her hair out with my fingers. I miss high school sometimes. It was simpler." He pressed his fingers against the area now that the medicine had time to work itself in, then touched a needle against the skin to test sensation.