Bruffin was a good friend of the clinic's former director, Jeremiah O'Kane, but was more suspicious of his successor, Colin Dove. He was romantically interested in his friend and co-worker, Dr Hearst, unaware that she was having an affair with Dove. When a series of gruesome murders began to occur in the vicinity of the clinic, Bruffin began his own investigations into the sinister history of the building and of their new "Patient Zero" — stirring the interest both of the clinic's new financier Peter Russell and of the Preternatural Research Bureau. Before he could find the answer, however, Bruffin became another victim of the murder spree and his briefly-speaking corpse was discovered by Hearst and Dove. (HOMEVID: The Zero Imperative)