“Let’s go, then.” Tracy glanced over her shoulder at Sam as she led their middle sister to the door. “Sam.”

Sam tried to shake off the shock. Spencer was young and strong. He’d be fine. Her sister needed her. Shake it off, she told herself. “Where’re your kids?”

“With Celia,” Angela said. “She took them for a walk so we could sleep in.”

“What can I do for you?” Lilia asked. At work, she was Sam’s chief of staff. Here, she was a close friend.

“Pray,” Sam said, even though she wasn’t particularly religious. What else could they do at a time like this?

Sam followed her sisters out the door and ran to Birch, a short distance from their cabin. The Camp David ambulance and fire department were already there. “Wait,” Sam said to her sisters as her training kicked in. “Ang shouldn’t go in there.”

“I want to be with him,” Angela said pleadingly. Her pretty face was red and puffy, her belly round with her third pregnancy.

“Let me go in and see what’s happening first.”

“Sam, please.”

“You don’t want to see things that can’t be unseen. Trust me on this.”

“Wait with me.” Tracy kept her arms around Angela. “Let Sam check first. Go, Sam. Hurry.”

Sam went up the stairs and stepped into chaos.

Spencer was on the floor of the living room. The first thing she noticed was that his face was gray. Sam recognized the automated external defibrillator from a training they’d had at work. The AED was hooked to Spencer as Harry performed CPR.

"Did you give him Narcan?” Sam asked, knowing it was routine to give the overdose drug in cases when an otherwise-healthy patient was unresponsive, even if the victim wasn’t a known drug user.

“Twice,” one of the EMTs said as they worked frantically.

That he hadn’t responded to the drug that quickly reversed an overdose could mean any number of things. Besides, there’s no way this was drug related. Spencer didn’t have a drug problem.

“Ask Angela when she last spoke to him and if he was taking meds,” Harry said, doing chest compressions as the EMTs worked on intubating him.

Sam ran outside to ask Angela the questions.

“Earlier this morning,” Angela said, her voice shaky. “He got up to use the bathroom and then went back to bed. Celia said she’d get up with our kids. He… He said to wake him up for breakfast.”

“Was he taking anything?”

“Just some pain meds.”

Sam went back inside. “She talked to him earlier this morning, and he was on pain meds.”

“We’ve got a faint heartbeat,” one of the EMTs said.

“We need to get him to GW Trauma ASAP,” Harry said, as he stopped compressions. “Get the chopper ready.”

“It’s standing by, Dr. Flynn.”

Working together, they got Spencer loaded onto a gurney.

Spencer’s heart might be beating, but he looked dead to Sam. How could this be happening? He’d been fine the night before. They’d played Pictionary. He’d drawn the funniest giraffe.