How to access notes from NoteStore.sqlite High Sierra in Catalina

Bizarre situation: internet went down. I wrote an entire essay in Mac notes on my 2011 MacBook Pro, which didn't sync to the cloud. That MBP crashed shortly thereafter. I've done literally everything I can think of: safe mode, verbose mode, recovery mode...nothing works. I pulled the SSD, placed in external drive reader and located "NoteStore.sqlite" with my 2018 MBP running Catalina. Is there a way to open and access this notes database so I retrieve my essay? I've tried the procedure replacing the notes folders, but to no avail. It just restarts notes and it's blank until I turn on internet and it repopulates notes (without my essay). If I had another machine with High Sierra, I suspect this may work, but I don't. Ideas?