A pathologist examines two dead young women and passes sections of organs to pathology for examination. The pathologist examines the specimens and questions the accuracy of the collection of tissue. When the collection has been confirmed the answer is devastating. The impact of this finding stretches far beyond the lives and families of the two women.
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.”
“Do you know what this means?”
“A lot of women are getting an infection somewhere. And right now we don’t know where.” Stan offered.
“The result is a lot of young women are infertile. Let’s look at the path reports on some of the tissue.” The result was less than satisfying. All showed the same thing. The uterus was badly scarred.
“It seems like it’s solid in the younger women, let’s see if there’s a pattern in the twenty to twenty four age group.” The scan went in and result flashed on the screen. Twenty four, three percent, twenty three, twenty percent. The remaining three years went up progressively until they hit eighty three percent.
“If I didn’t know better, women over twenty three aren’t affected and those under twenty three are. I wonder what this means?”
Dr. Butler looked at the ceiling. “Can you imagine the impact of this? This is a disaster. It could mean the end of this country, a birth rate dropping to less than twenty percent of what it was. That would be eight hundred thousand babies instead of four million a year. Look at the impact of abortion and it was twenty percent, not eighty.”
“Don’t be dramatic. It can’t be that bad.”
“It can. What if less than one out of five women in this nation were fertile. Our population would shrink. The impact on our economy would be devastating. People would be out of work all over.”
“Including OB/GYN’s. They’d get hit first.”
“Funny. Eventually it would hit guys that handle dead bodies. Come on. This is serious. What do we do?”
Stan looked up, “First, we don’t tell anyone. That goes for you too Tom. Not your wife, not your girlfriends, not your partner. We need to find out more before we let anyone know. If the press were to get this right now it would be a major mess. It might be a statistical glitch. It may only be here in Harrisburg. This is too small a sample.” He said it but he didn’t believe it. Neither did the others.
Alpha Four Chapter 01: Two Autopsies
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