There is something to be said for the ability to compartmentalize and repress, if only in the ability to handle extreme situations. This is wildly outside Bruce's experience to date, but he's got at least some psychological coping mechanisms.

they make him horrible at being a person, but they do help here.

"California. Forty or so miles inland, if the map I was shown was at all to scale. It may not have been. There's a town, ghost town now, not far outside the walls."