“Leonard Betts” is episode twelve of season four of The X-Files.
An ambulance is driving at night in Pittsburgh. The driver is calling in a male cardiac patient. The other EMT, Betts, is working on the patient. He seems really good at his job. He tells the driver that the patient is drying of cancer, which has already eaten through one lung. He just knows. The driver looks away from the road for a second, goes through a red light and gets T-boned by another vehicle. The ambulance’s cab and driver are okay, for certain levels of okay, but the rear is trashed. The driver goes looking for Betts, who has been thrown out of the vehicle. She finds him. Betts’s head and body are no longer attached.
Betts and the patient are put in morgue drawers. Later, the attendant is working and listening to music when he thinks he heard a bang. He did. Betts’ morgue drawer is open and his head is on the floor. Then someone hits the attendant and walks off.
Scully is checking Betts’ broken-open morgue drawer when Mulder joins her. She says whoever got locked in really wanted to get out. Mulder tells her it was Leonard Betts, decapitated, an EMT at the hospital and apparently very good. Someone stole the morgue attendant’s clothes. The attendant didn’t see who and there’s no sign of a break-in. Scully asks what they are doing there. Mulder asks if he mentioned Betts had no head. Surely Mulder isn’t suggesting a headless body kicked its way out of the drawer. She thinks it’s more likely the corpse was stolen to sell as a teaching cadaver. Mulder asks why take the headless one then.
There are stills from the security cameras showing someone walking out in the attendant’s clothes, but interference is hiding the head. Clearly, they are not carrying a corpse. Scully has an idea where it might be. Medical waste processing, where it is sterilised and used for roadfill. Mulder clearly does not fancy diving into removed tumours and severed limbs. Unfortunately, he has to – Scully’s arms aren’t long enough. Mulder finds Betts’ head but the body clearly isn’t there. So, why take the time to dispose of the head?
Mulder is going to head to Betts’ to see how he lives. Lived, corrects Scully. He wants her to examine the head. The examination shows a bunch of stuff inconsistent with the time of death. Then the head opens its eyes and mouth. This freaks Scully out a bit.
In Bett’s apartment, Mulder finds the morgue attendant’s uniform, blood, an open window and a bath full of apparently iodine. Scully rings him; she has a unique situation. She’s tried, and failed, to PET scan the head four times. Each time there was interference. Only radiation could account for it. No, she hasn’t performed an examination of the head. There’s an unusual degree of post mortem galvanic response. It blinked at her. She’s not saying it’s alive. But perhaps it’s not quite dead. Mulder tells her that whoever stole the uniform came to Betts’ apartment and made themselves at home. Maybe it was their home. As Mulder leaves, Betts’s head rises out of the bath. The head appears to be in the process of being regrown.
Mulder speaks to Betts’ driver. He had no family or friends; she liked him, but he wasn’t really a friend. He was an amazing med tech, able to diagnose diseases better than any doctor. He could look at you and tell you what was wrong, especially with cancer. He never got sick and was never injured until, well.
Scully is having the head effectively mummified and sliced. A slice shows something strange. Every cell in the head and the brain is cancerous. No, it isn’t possible to live in this condition – and you’d be long dead before getting to this stage. The belief is that the process distorted the sample. Not believed by Mulder.
A slice of the brain is taken to Dr Charles Burk’s lab at the University of Maryland for some Kirlian photography. This shows shoulders below the head. Mulder suggests that in this case cancer is not destructive and aggressive but a normal state of being. Regeneration; Betts regrew his head. What Mulder found in his apartment is used to aid regeneration.
So, they have a cancer-riddled person who can regenerate any wound. Looks like they’ve found Deadpool. Certainly, someone far more worth of the name Cancer Man than CSM. Mulder is sure they are looking for Betts and Betts driver hears someone who sounds like him on the radio.