Jane gritted her teeth together, wincing at the pain. Sparks of light danced on the back of her tightly closed eyelids and she could feel a small bead of sweat trickling down her temple.
"You mind going a bit slower there, hammer hands?" She bellowed sarcastically as the feeling slowly faded. "I know you needed me awake so I could tell you when it hurt but I didn't figure you'd keep testing it out just for kicks."
"Yeah well I'm not used to working on machines that talk back quite so much." A man's voice replied nonchalantly from behind her.
"I'm not a machine." Jane answered simply. "You on the other hand…" She trailed off.
"You know, actually I take that back." The man said, seemingly ignoring Jane's comment. "A lot of my machines talk back to me, now that I think about it."
"Sir, her blood pressure is dropping, you really should go slower." A nurse interjected as she watched a monitor screen.
He seemed oblivious to the woman's words and continued muttering thoughtfully, "I think I have to prefer J.A.R.V.I.S. though, not quite so cranky."
Jane slowly blinked her eyes open and they adjusted to the light of the room. With her face situated in the padded hole of the reclined chair she couldn't see much else except her hands resting on her knees where they had been before.
"Mr. Stark, If you don't let her stabilize she could go into shock." The nurse continued, pulling the mask from her face. "Mr. Stark!" She repeated forcefully when he didn't acknowledge her statement.
Tony sighed, partly out of frustration and partly of irritation, and tossed the plier-like object in his hands onto the metal tray beside him. "Doesn't matter," he said, pulling his mask off. "I've seen all I can, you can get her stitched up." Dropping his plastic gloves in a trash can he walked out the door, leaving the nurse simply shaking her head in annoyance.
"Wallace, Romero, you're up." She said, motioning to the two figures to the side of the room. "I don't know why I even let them talk me into working with him again." She muttered as she exited the room with a sigh.
"Miss Smith?" A woman asked, approaching Jane, still draped with the surgery linens. "My name is Jessica Wallace. Dr. Romero and I are going to get you cleaned up and get you into a room where you can rest until the paralytic is out of your system."
Jane could hear the man preparing to put stitches in her back and asked, "How long until it wears off?"
"It shouldn't take too long, I'm sure you'll be up and walking in less than an hour." Jessica replied kindly.
"So I take it he's like that a lot?" Jane asked after letting out a deep breath.
Jessica worked at removing the several dozen electrodes hooked up to Jane's head as she answered. "Who, Stark? I'm guessing you don't see the news much. He was actually pretty tame today, believe me once you get him going you can never get him to shut up."
"That other nurse didn't seem to care much for him." Jane commented.
Romero stifled a chuckle and Jessica shot him a knowing glare. Continuing his uniform stitches he moved up Jane's back toward her neck. "Webster doesn't care for a lot of people, Tony Stark just happens to rank pretty high on her list."
"So why agree to the job when she knew he was involved?" Jane asked.
Jessica shrugged, "She's good at her job. Fury knew she'd had experience working with him before and requested her specifically. I guess she felt better knowing there was somebody with him who could keep him in his boundaries."
Wallace and Romero finished their work quickly as the room sat in silence. Jane grimaced as Romero finished the last few stitches at the base of her skull, the needle tugging at her now sensitive skin. She felt a jolt as the man pressed a series of controls, making the chair begin raising itself to an upright position. The chair whirred as it moved and slowly Jane felt herself beginning to tilt backwards until it lurched to a stop and she was now sitting up straight, straddling the back of the medical chair.
"Uh, a little help here? There's about to be a cleanup on aisle three." Jane interjected when she realized she was now tipping off the padded chair like a tree being chopped in the forest, fully unable to move any of her extremities.
Both doctors quickly lurched to catch her, Romero sending a tray full of tools crashing to the floor in doing so. "I am so, so sorry." Jessica quickly apologized, her face flushed with embarrassment. "I didn't realize the chair went all the way up, I'm so sorry."
"Relax," Jane said with a smirk, "it's not a big deal, it could have happened to anyone. Besides it would have been hilarious to see me just plop over like that!" Jessica let out a small laugh, but still felt horrible about it. Supporting Jane she motioned Romero to bring the rolling bed closer and together they lifted the immobile Jane onto it.