Not Contagious--Only Cancer

A nursing aide harvests lessons caring for seniors to fight for her life. Kyong Ah Choi eases patients from the jaws of disaster, coaxing cranky limbs and organs into working order. One night she coughs up a blood clot resembling a chunk of Dead Husband's liver. She smothers panic with cigarettes and memory of a patient who staged his own Kevorkian.

Yet her blood will not be silenced. Soon she shuttles between days rescuing patients and nights at the county hospital, where Oakland's shot, maimed, and uninsured lean away from her TB-like hacking. Loath to ask for help, she dodges her kids Yumi the hater, Mickey the boozer, and Sally the lesbian sex toy store clerk. But when a North-Korean-missile-sized biopsy needle disgorges its payload, Kyong Ah must up her game to outwit a killer that copycats the ingenuity of its immigrant host.