A Study in Scars

Being a reprint from the reminiscences of JOHN H. WATSON, M.A. in Medicine.

Chapter I. Meeting Sherlock Holmes

Last year I was offered a job as a professor of medicine at the University of London. A job that I took without hesitation. Not that becoming a professor was what I intended to do after getting my license as a practitioner ten years earlier. Sure, my old professors at Oxford would be delighted to know that I would finally take heed to their advise and recommendations to pursue an academic career. They would clap me on the back, saying that they always knew that military service wasn't suited for a bright mind like mine. They would be thrilled to hear that I left the common practice of healing sick people behind to chase after the much more important issue of unveiling the truth of the human body.

But the truth was far less noble. I hated the academic life. It just doesn't involve dealing with almost starved children, round and swollen black bellies filled with nothing but protein deficiency and pain. A classroom isn't filled with the burned, the crippled, the amputees that crawled their way out of their torture prisons. By spending my nights grading papers, I didn't have to spend them on picking the shards of a grenade a young woman's hips. Or several bullets, broken glass or splintered rocks. As long as I didn't have to bandage half rotten flesh wounds, hopelessly infected by rusty barbwire or a rabid dog. As long as I could get away from Somalia. To get away from that white armband marked with a red cross, I would have done almost everything. I needed a fresh start.

After several years of service, they labeled me with post-traumatic stress syndrome. They gave me a medal, an honorable discharge and a new job at the university of London. I was thirty-five, on the brink of depression, highly educated and as free as air - or at least as free as my salary of a professor without a PHD would allow me to be. And without having any relatives in this part of the country, I discovered quickly that living in London was quite expensive.

I was a sunny Tuesday morning when the solution to my troubles came to me in the form of a friend and a caramel flavored latte macchiato. I was sitting outside of my favorite coffee bar in Camden Lock - my drink in my hand, thinking about what I should be doing with my life- when suddenly felt a friendly tap on my shoulder. "John Watson?" I turned and recognized Ronald Stamford, who graduated with me as a chemist at Oxford. Seeing a familiar face in this great and unknown city after all this time was a pleasant thing for a lonely man.

"It is you! Good grief, John! How long has it been? Like ten years? What are you doing here?" he asked in undisguised wonder, as he sat down next to me, drinking his own pumpkin-spiced latte.

"Looking for lodgings." I answered smiling. "Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price."

"That's a strange thing," remarked my companion with a chuckle; "you are the second person today that has used that expression to me."

"And who was the first?" I asked.

A few hours later, we opened the doors of Ingold Labs on Gordon Street. We went left at the front desk and headed down towards room C.003: one of the bigger laboratories used by the chemistry department of the University of London.

"You've been very quiet about this friend of yours. You're not setting me up to meet some sort of psychopath, right?", I asked Stamford, trying to keep up with his pace descending the staircase. "It is not easy to express the inexpressible," he answered distracted, as he went into a corridor on his right. "I wouldn't use the word 'psychopath'. A little too scientific would be more appropriate."

-"What do you mean by that? Surely, as an academic you would appreciate a scientific approach above everything else?"

Stamford laughed. "Being scientific is fine. However, when it comes to beating dead bodies in the dissecting-rooms with a broomstick, or asking me if I would assist in an experiment involving arsenic intake to study the effects on the human body first hand, the term 'scientific' is certainly taking a rather bizarre shape."

-"Beating corpses?"

"Yes, to 'verify how far bruises may be produced after death.'"

-"You're kidding."

"I wish! I saw it with my own eyes. Ah, here we are!"

Stamford opened a door, and we entered a large room, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and several little Bunsen burners with their blue flickering flames. There was a woman in the room, bending over a distant table. She was in her early thirties, smartly dressed, with a bushy ponytail and bright green, piercing eyes. At the sound of our footsteps, she glanced round and sprang up with a cry of pleasure. "I have found a way to separate DNA strings in the blood from the DNA strings created by bone marrow!" Had she discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shown upon her features.

"Hello Stamford, I see you brought a friend. How do you do?", she said, extending a hand towards me. I shook it firmly. "London must be quite a change from Somalia, I imagine." I stood there like I was just struck in the face.

"How can you possibly know that?", I asked in bewilderment. The young woman chuckled to herself. "Oh, never mind! That's not important right now. What is important is the DNA! As a medical man, you can see the relevance of this new discovery, no doubt?"

"Well, it's interesting. Chemically, at least…" I answered hesitantly.

"That much is clear." the woman said dryly, as she started to put the test-tubes back into their metal holders. "What is also clear, is that you don't understand is the practicality of this discovery. While it is, in fact, one of the most practical discoveries in forensic medicine of the last ten years. Here, let me show it to you."

She took me by my shirt sleeve and pulled me closer to the table. Then, she took a cotton swab out of a plastic bag and put it in her mouth. After moving it around a few times, she took it out again and put in on a glass plate. "We can both agree that my saliva is on there. Ergo, my DNA is coated to that piece of cotton like wax to a candle wick, right?" She stared at me as if to answer, so I nodded politely. "That would be the case." – "Good!" She took a scalpel from her desk and made a small, but very precise cut in her left thumb. I was so surprised that I didn't have time to react. The dark red liquid bubbled up, out of her thumb and on another glass plate.

"Now, if we put these two plates in electron microscope, would you agree that the DNA that we could trace from the blood and my saliva would be identical?"

– "Absolutely."

"And that's where you'd be wrong!" With a triumphant smile, she took both glass plates from the table and held them very close to my face. "As the result of a bone marrow transplant when I was a little girl, some of my blood is tinted with my donors DNA. By my blood, I'm a different person than by my salvia. Now, if I were to commit a crime, wouldn't you agree that this condition would give me the perfect alibi to any DNA-based evidence that would come my way? I would simply donate my blood and be free of all charges. Now, with my test," and here she jiggled the glass dishes even closer to my face "I would be exposed for the great criminal that I am!"

Both myself and Ronald stood there in awe, impressed by this young woman. Then Stamford started laughing. "John Watson, I would like you to meet Sherlock Holmes." he said, by way of introducing us. He sat down on a high three-legged stool close to one of the workspaces and pushed another one in my direction with his foot. "Sherlock, my dear friend John needs a place to stay as he will be teaching here this year..."

–"Odd choice for a military officer."

"How did you know…"

"…and as you were complaining this morning that no one wanted to go halves with you", Stamford continued "I thought that I'd bring you two together."

If Miss Sherlock seemed appalled by the idea of living together with a man she just met, she didn't show it. "You don't mind bubbles, do you?"

"Excuse me?." I answered.

–"Soap bubbles. Sometimes I blow them when I'm thinking. Do you mind the sound or the smell of popping soap bubbles?"

"No, I can't say that I have something against soap bubbles."

– "Good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?"

"By no means." – "It's just as well for two people to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together. Let me see—what are my other shortcomings?", she said, tapping her teeth with a test-tube, pacing from left to right "There are times when I don't open my mouth for days on end. Please, just let me alone, and I'll soon be right." She paused and looked over at me. "What are your secret bad habits?

I couldn't help but laugh at this cross-examination. "I'm a terrible cook, and can get up at all sorts of ungodly hours. And I am extremely lazy. I think that covers most of them at present."

"Do still you own your gun?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Army officers in active warzones are obligated to wear a firearm, both for self-protection while retrieving wounded soldiers and in case of a surprise attack. Since you clearly weren't a combat medic, judging by the state of your body, I would say a pistol rather than a rifle. Probably a 9x19 mm A SIG Sauer P226. My question is when they relieved you of service, did they also relieve your service weapon?"

After that a there was an uncomfortable silence. Eventually, I quietly spoke."I kept my gun. And my nerves are a bit shaken. That's all there is. "

"Can your shaken nerves handle cello-playing? " she asked carefully, almost anxiously.

"Well, that depends on the player," I answered with a sigh, glad to change the subject

. "A well-played cello is a treat—a badly-played one—"

"You're right!" she cried, with a cheerful laugh. "I think we may consider the thing as settled—that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you. I have my eye on a apartment in Baker Street," she said, looking me straight in the eye. "The location would be perfect for my occupation, if not a bit crowded."

"Sounds fine by me. When shall we see them?"

"Call me at noon tomorrow, and we'll go together and settle everything," she answered with a bright smile and she handed me a small business card.

"All right—noon exactly," said I, shaking her hand.

I stood up and walked towards the exit. "One last thing." I asked, stopping in front of the door and turning upon Sherlock, "How in God's name did you know that I had come from Somalia or carried a pistol during my service there?" My companion smiled an enigmatical smile. "A good many people have wanted to know how I finds things out. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," I answered, and strolled on to my hotel alone, considerably interested in my new acquaintance.

Disclaimer

Hello fellow readers! This is my first fanfic/adaptation project, so please be gentle. As some of you might have noticed, a Study in Scars is a modern day interpretation of A Study in Scarlet and contains no sex, but some violence, death and murder.

If anything, my work is an homage to the original 'A Study in Scarlet' and follows the storyline and structure in great detail. My work is very similar to the original, just because it is an adaptation more than an expansion of canon. I highly encourage you to read the original stories to see how I adapted the story! It is written by a FAR superior writer than me and makes my story far more interesting to read. I merely wish to revisit, expand and honor these works by adapting it to explore new possibilities.

Since I'm not the remnant spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I'd wish!), I do not own the rights to A study in Scarlet, nor are the work (or any other works by Doyle) my intellectual property in any form or any medium. Neither do I claim any ownership of any of the characters related to the original stories, modern day translations or adaptations. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote these amazing stories and characters, which I love to explore deeper, expand on and adapt to a different society. Just as his works, my adaptations are a work of fiction. This is a fictional story about fictional representations of fictional people. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. If anyone is financially damaged by this work, please contact me and I'll remove the story right away. This adaptation is for entertainment purposes only! If you like my stories and wish to share them, please keep these intentions clear.