April 18 2003 Harrisburg PA

Dr. Butler was puzzled. Interviews with both Chad and Lori were fruitless. They both insisted they had no other partners. “But how could she have gotten the infection?” she wondered to herself.

She called Records and asked for the files of the other two women to be pulled from optical storage. When they were available a mail message on her terminal signaled. She pulled up the information and saw Stan’s notation. Both were virgins. Now, we had another woman with the same symptoms who claimed she had no contact but her husband and he claimed no contact. In addition, tests on him showed no indication of an infection.

She called Stan and asked him to join her for coffee. She laid out the information. He looked up, “Could there be a virus that does this damage that is not sexually transmitted?”

“I’m sure this is possible but I haven’t seen one written up anywhere. It would almost need to get into the blood somehow.”

Stan sat there a few minutes. “You know, I’ve been seeing a few more of these infections than I’d have expected but more women are obviously sexually active and I’ve just sorta ignored what isn’t a part of the cause of death. What if there is a connection?”

“Grab your coffee, can we use your office?”

“Sure, what for.”

Once in his office Dr. Warner called the computer security supervisor. Could they have access to some statistical information about patients. Tom, the security supervisor hung up and went directly to Dr. Warner’s office. He would allow access but he would monitor their activities.

First they obtained a count of all women patients and noted how many were listed as having scarring from PID. The percentage was three percent.

Stan looked up, “See if age matters.”

The screen showed a list, by five year age ranges. There wasn’t any significant difference by age.

Dr. Butler looked worried. “Let’s pull only the patients who had died. These would show an autopsy report which would be more likely to spot a problem.” The numbers came up. Eighty five percent in fifteen to nineteen and sixty seven in twenty to twenty four. Above that, it was a spotty five to eight percent. Stan frowned. The problem seemed to be getting worse. “Let’s see who did the autopsy’s.” One pathologist had none. The results from the other five were nearly uniform. “I think Charlie is missing them. It looks like the number is closer to ninety five percent if you throw out his results.”