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It had to be some sort of unique identifier, something that tied each of the men together. But she had already searched the name – there were simply too many results to sift through and no guarantee there was even anything there to find. How else could she refine the search? What else did she know about them? When she had met Gant he had referred to enhanced human regenerative capacity. Each of them had spent their lives in the military. There was a good chance at least one of them had been injured at some point. It was just possible
that
had been noticed somewhere. She typed
Cody regen* OR recup* OR heal*
, using the wild card to catch all derivatives of the root of each word. She was about to send the search and then it occurred to her: if Cody was indeed some form of identifier it might be short for something else. She moved the mouse, amended the first word so that the search now read
Cod* regen* OR recup* OR heal*
and then hit Enter.

Again, thousands of results: North Atlantic fish supplies, computer gaming tips, pain medication. She scanned the summaries quickly, clicking to the second and then the third pages. Oh well, it had been a long shot – she hadn’t really held much hope of finding anything. She was about to start composing her e-mail to Sheriff Henrikssen when she noticed an entry at the bottom of the page.

She recognized the website immediately. The Lancet was one of the world’s oldest and most respected peer-reviewed medical journals – she had used its research on numerous occasions as a student. The result summary referred to an article, the engine highlighting only the searched words in the title: ‘…Regenerative Capacity…’ and in a partial reference from the article to ‘…subject Codratus Doyle…’. She clicked the URL at the top of the search result, the link bringing her to the Past Issues section of the Lancet’s website, to a volume from February 1942. The full title of the article was
Findings on the Regenerative Capacity of Human Spinal and Other Tissue
by a Doctor Jerome Bryant, M.D. Camb., F.R.C.S. of Lambeth Hospital, London. A .pdf of the article was available for download for subscribers or to anyone else on payment of a thirty-dollar fee. She was sure her department at Berkeley had a subscription but she didn’t know the login ID or password. She reached into her purse for her credit card and typed in the details. A few moments later a grey box appeared in the middle of the screen, a green progress bar telling her the file was downloading. When it was done she clicked the button to open the document. Her eyes flicked down through the opening paragraphs, impatient to read whether the article had anything to do with Gant.

The article described how two men had been admitted to Lambeth Hospital on the night of 29
^th
December, 1940. They had been found outside a burning building in the Brixton area of south London by an Air Raid Precautions warden who had come to investigate the blaze. Both had been in critical condition, suffering from severe head injuries, extensive burns and the effects of smoke inhalation. Attempts to revive the men, both by the ARP warden who had been first on the scene and by members of the Auxiliary Fire Service who had arrived subsequently, had failed. London had that night suffered the most devastating air raid of the war, incendiaries and high explosives dropped by the Luftwaffe causing a firestorm that had swept through the city, and it had taken some time for the emergency services to get the men to the hospital. By the time they had been admitted the older man had died from his injuries, never having regained consciousness. The younger man had been examined and was found to be alive, but only just. Given the extent of his injuries he hadn’t been expected to survive the night. The article reported that he had been sent for X-rays but admitted that otherwise he hadn’t been prioritized, most likely receiving little treatment that first night as the hospital struggled to cope with the scores of casualties that were being admitted each hour.

By morning the situation at the hospital had stabilized and attention had finally turned to the young man. Bryant remarked that it was perhaps fortunate that the patient had still not regained consciousness - he had suffered second and third degree burns to most of his body and his lungs had been scorched from breathing the air in the building from which he had been pulled. But as serious as those injuries were, they were not what had concerned the doctor who examined him that morning. The X-rays taken during the night had shown that the man had suffered extreme trauma to his head and neck. His jaw had been broken and there was extensive damage to four of the seven cervical vertebrae. The delicate atlas and axis bones that connected the skull to the spinal column allowing movement of the head and neck had each been fractured in several places, Bryant describing particular damage to both pedicles of the C2, C3 and C4 vertebrae. The first intervertebral disk of the spinal column had been ruptured. The injuries, particularly to the C3 and C4 vertebrae, indicated that one or more of the cervical spinal nerves had almost certainly been compromised, the damage caused by the initial trauma almost certainly exacerbated by the manner of the patient’s transport to the hospital. The initial prognosis had been grim. In the unlikely event that he were to recover from his burn injuries, which would in any event leave him horribly scarred, he would almost certainly no longer have the use of his arms or legs. Surgery was not an option. Even had the patient been in a condition to survive it, no techniques existed to repair the damage that he had sustained. The hospital records showed that the attending doctor had simply instructed the nurses to immobilize his head and neck to prevent further damage to the spine, to clean and dress the man’s wounds and to make sure that, in the unlikely event he regained consciousness, he was made comfortable. Beyond that there was little that could be done for him.

Alison leaned backwards in the chair, stretching her shoulders, her lower back protesting against the rigid plastic. While the author was clearly familiar with the terse prose required for publication in such a distinguished medical journal she couldn’t help but think that there was a hint of the theatrical in the way that Bryant described the man’s condition. She had started by skimming the paragraphs but now she found herself leaning forward to read the words on the screen, transfixed by the plight of the young man almost seventy years before, keen to discover what had happened to him. She read on.

Doyle had not died. For the next week the nurses had tended to his wounds, dressing them with tulle gras or vaseline gauze. At this point Bryant noted that since the outbreak of the war it had been discovered that severe shock invariably accompanied an extensive burn, and its treatment was therefore an immediate priority. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the patient had suffered horrendous burns to almost two-thirds of his body, plasma had not been given, the author simply explaining that blood products had been in incredibly short supply and that the prognosis had been that the man wasn’t expected to survive for very long.

Which was probably just as well, Alison thought. In 1940 the
hh
phenotype had still not been discovered. Assuming this man did indeed share a common physiology with Gant, he would have tested simply as having blood group O. If the hospital had given him what it would have assumed to be compatible blood or plasma while he had been in that state it would certainly have killed him.

After a week it had been noticed that there was a marked improvement in the man’s burns. The charred, suppurating tissue that had covered much of his body when he had first been admitted had been replaced with new skin, still fleshy pink and tender, but lacking any indication of either infection or the scarring that was to be expected following such extensive injuries. The attending doctor had asked for a fresh set of X-rays to be carried out to see whether there had been any similar improvement in the injuries he had sustained to his head and neck. The results had been no less amazing. The man’s jaw and four damaged vertebrae were almost completely healed, the multiple fracture lines so evident on the earlier X-rays no longer visible, layers of compact bone already well formed around each of the break sites. The doctor had immediately brought the case to the attention of the author, the hospital’s consultant orthopedic surgeon.

She could tell that Bryant was now moving into his area of expertise. The paragraphs that followed described in detail the physiological processes involved in the healing of fractures – the initial formation of hematoma and granulation tissue around the fracture site, the development of hyaline cartilage – gristle – and woven bone from the membrane of periosteal cells lining the outer surface of the bone and the eventual joining of these two new tissue types from both sides of the broken bone to form the fracture callus, an intermediate stage in the recovery process that restored some of the original strength to the fractured bone. The hyaline cartilage around the fracture itself would later become ossified and finally the outer layers of lamellar tissue would transform into compact bone, the denser, harder, stiffer substance that forms the outer shell of most bones, giving them their ultimate strength. Alison wasn’t a specialist in orthopedic medicine but she had studied the process while at medical school and she scanned quickly through the next few paragraphs.

Bryant concluded his description of the healing of fractures by pointing out that the length of the process was dependent on a variety of factors including the extent of the injury, the angle of dislocation or fracture, the nature of the treatment received and obviously the general health of the patient. Under optimal conditions the author noted that a straightforward fracture of a cervical vertebra might be expected to heal in twelve weeks. And yet in this instance the patient had shown almost full recovery from a variety of extreme compound fractures, having received little treatment other than the cleaning and dressing of his burns, in little over a week.

The seemingly incredible powers of recuperation exhibited by the patient had prompted Bryant to re-examine the spinal cord injuries diagnosed when the man had originally been admitted. The article explained that it was of course possible for a person to break their neck and yet not sustain a spinal cord injury as long as only the vertebrae around the spinal cord, and not the cord itself, had been damaged. However the sheer extent of the injuries to the patient’s cervical vertebrae, as evident from the initial X-rays, had led Bryant in this instance to agree with the initial diagnosis that quadriplegia – the loss of function in all four limbs – was inevitable. Only the fact that the patient hadn’t experienced respiratory failure indicated that the spinal cord hadn’t also been compromised above that level.

However, as the article now explained, an accurate assessment of damage to the spinal cord typically involved an examination of an alert, orientated patient with no distracting injury. As the man had yet to regain consciousness such an examination had thus far not been possible. Bryant had therefore prescribed a myelogram, an x-ray examination of the spinal canal using a contrast agent injected through a needle into the spinal column to allow the spinal cord, spinal canal, and nerve roots to show up.

Alison winced as the article described the contrast agent that had been used. She had read about this in medical school. Thorium dioxide had first been used in radiology as a contrast medium in the nineteen-thirties and had initially appeared ideal for the purpose of myelography. It wasn’t until the ’sixties that it had been realized that the highly radioactive substance was an exceptionally effective neurotoxin. An unusually high incidence of malignancies involving the brain and spinal cord had been found among those who had been exposed to it.

The article reported that Bryant had performed the myelogram himself. The results had shown that, as expected, the patient’s spinal cord had been completely severed at the C4 vertebra. Regardless of the exceptional recuperative powers the man had thus far shown, recovery from such a trauma was impossible. If he were ever to regain consciousness the surgeon had concluded that he would spend the remainder of his life without any motor or sensory function below the neck. The patient had been returned to a convalescent ward where he could be cared for while his wounds continued to heal.

A week or so after the myelogram the patient’s bandages had been removed. His burns had healed completely, without any trace of scarring. Nevertheless the young man hadn’t regained consciousness. For the next six months he had remained on the ward, fed through a tube, catheterized. A subsequent review of the nurses’ reports indicated that other than the occasional bed bath he had required little care, seemingly unaffected by the typical problems – circulatory issues, bed sores – that afflicted those who remained immobile for protracted periods.

Then in July of 1941, with no apparent warning, the patient had woken up. The nurses’ report indicated that he had been agitated and confused. Showing little sign of the muscle atrophication that would be typical following such a prolonged period of inactivity, let alone any evidence of the debilitating spinal injuries that he had suffered, he had resisted the efforts of a hospital orderly to restrain him and had promptly discharged himself. A report was subsequently filed with the Metropolitan Police, through which the author had finally learned the man’s name. The article went on to describe a number of attempts Bryant had personally made to track the man down, but all to no avail. As at the date of publication of the article – she checked the first page of the article again: February 1942 – Codratus Doyle hadn’t returned to the hospital.

The article concluded with the author offering some theories as to the subject’s apparently exceptional recuperative abilities but most of what followed was conjecture. For whatever reason, possibly because it wasn’t his specialty, Bryant hadn’t really focused on Doyle’s burn injuries. There had been no analysis of blood, no tissue samples taken. The speed with which his fractures had healed had engaged him for a while but even that had apparently not prompted him to explore further once the supposedly irreversible injuries to the spinal cord had been revealed by the myelogram. Doyle had spent six months in a corner of a hospital ward, largely forgotten about other than by the nurses who would have been tasked with bathing him and changing his bedding. All the time his body had been repairing itself, regenerating spinal tissue in a way that even now, seventy years later, was regarded by medical science as utterly impossible. By the time the true extent of his regenerative capacity had become clear it had been too late. Doyle had fled, the only evidence of his remarkable abilities his dramatic departure, the opportunity to study him lost.