"It's not okay. That - what you went though - is horrific. The end result sucking marginally less than the back-home alternative doesn't make it something you have to be blase about. Especially not to make it more comfortable on whoever you're talking to."

He has dead patients. He has patients who are killers, something he can rationalise, here, by their need to eat. Kidnap and torture aren't the kind of games he has sympathy for.

Dying here is real, it's just a different reality. If he'd-

He'd still be a murderer if the guy woke up the next day.

Chase draws his hand back, brushing his fingers down her neck. It's not a come on. Something like sympathy.

"Though I admit, I'm glad it wasn't the back-home alternative either. Would have cut this conversation a lot shorter."