Page 60 of Spades

I grab my phone out of my purse and see a tiny blue slip of paper.

Oh, my God.

The note from Seven.

It’s probably nothing, like Maddox said. She probably wrote down the order. Or she didn’t write it at all and it just got affixed to my glass by mistake.

Still, though.

I plug in my phone and grab my laptop out of my bedroom, opening it and pulling up Google.

The handwriting is messy so I can’t quite make out what all the words are. I type into Google “Asian languages that use the Latin alphabet.”

The search engine’s automatic AI gives me the answer right away. Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, and Vietnamese all use the same alphabet as English.

If I could make out the letters and marks on the note, I would just type it into Google Translate. But I can’t quite do it.

Dinah is Vietnamese. Her parents brought her here when she was very young, and she grew up speaking both her native language and English.

If this is Vietnamese, maybe she can help make it out.

I smirk. Dinah will look up at me with sarcastic raised eyebrows, probably telling me that the mysterious note attached to my glass says something like “dirty martini.”

And we’ll have a good laugh about it.

* * *

I arriveat the hospital ten minutes before my shift. I head to the ladies’ changing room to get into a fresh pair of scrubs.

I pocket the note from Seven and head to the nurse’s station, placing my purse on the counter.

I wave at the head nurse, Janice. “Is Dinah around?”

She scrunches her forehead. “No. She was just here. Probably just went to the bathroom. I?—”

She’s interrupted by a piercing alarm coming from one of the rooms on the ward. A patient is flatlining.

Janice jumps to her feet, and I look around, trying to figure out which room the noise is emitting from.

Oh, my God. It’s room 1832. Carol and Lou’s room.

I run toward it. Dr. O’Rourke rushes in, his face grave. I take in the room. Carol’s eyes are wide and her face is flushed. She’s not screaming. She doesn’t have enough lung power.

Lou is the one flatlining.

Dr. O’Rourke nods at me. “Alissa. Start CPR. I’ll prep the defibrillator.”

“Yes, doctor.” I head over to Lou and administer a few chest compressions, pushing down over the base of his sternum about two inches each time.

Dr. O’Rourke, meanwhile, begins charging the defib. He glances over to Janice, who is standing in the doorway. “Janice, get a milligram of epinephrine into his bloodstream. Follow it up a flush of twenty CC’s of saline.”

Janice starts attending to Lou’s IV while I continue chest compressions.

I glance at the heart monitor. “He’s still flatlining, doctor.”

I look down at Lou’s lifeless body.Come on, Lou, I beg him in my mind.You have to live. You and Carol need each other.

Dr. O’Rourke places the defibrillator’s electrodes on Lou’s chest, one below his right shoulder and the other at the left side of his waist.

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