During her time at school, Allison had met people from all around the world, but she had yet to meet a person from Finland. Torsten was the first, and she suspected he would be the only one for quite some time, but he certainly represented his people well. If all Finns were this nice and courteous, she may just have to visit the country one day. It was also rather interesting that his parents were physicists, and she imagined that the bearded man had grown up with a second hand knowledge of nuclear power, the same way she had with knowledge of a courtroom and the judicial process. Those two subjects couldn't have been further apart.

Accepting the knife from him, Allison got to work on slicing the vegetables. Her steady hand produced straight and consistent cuts each time, coming from years of hands on practice and nights spent in the lab building up the necessary hours to earn a credit. Medicine and surgery came naturally to Allison, but cooking did not. Most often than the young doctor would have liked to admit, she ended up eating whatever was around and quick. It wasn't the most healthy diet in the world, which was ironic, but not uncommon in her field—especially among people her age. A home cooked meal sounded like heaven, and Allison was only happy to contribute.

As the stew simmered away over the fire, Allison started to clean up, figuring it was the polite thing to do. The water that ran from the tap flowed freely, without interruption and the only indication that something wasn't quite right was the temperature. No matter which was she turned the faucet handle, the water stayed the same temperature. Always one to reason things away, deduce and minimize, Allison equated the cold water with the mountains. Torsten probably didn't have the most up to date plumbing system, so Allison settled for giving the knife a rinse. 

That accent of his was quite endearing, and Allison found herself smiling as she nodded. “I do. I start my residency at the OHSU teaching hospital on Monday,” she explained. “I was coming from Boston,” she gestured in the appropriate direction of the city, thousands of miles away now.

Crossing from the kitchen back into the living space, the dark-haired woman was drawn to the pictures on the walls. The photographs told a story and Allison easy got a sense of who Torsten was; adventurous, hard working and very brave. She turned back to him, hands settling into her pockets once more. “What do you do?” she asked, wondering if he was a scientist like his parents, but studying in a different field, or if he had just decided to live in the a beautiful, secluded place after his tour of duty. Allison didn't have much experience when it came to psychology, and she knew that many soldiers were left with invisible wounds from the war. Torsten seemed to have it all together.