The funny thing about hitting rock bottom is that you never quite know once you’ve reached it. That whooshing, falling feeling never ceases, and at every preceding level you’ve thought, This has to be it, right?

Sitting in a hospital room in Chelsea—drowsily answering questions about her emotional state, her family’s mental health history, the exact number of pills she’d just swallowed—Adelaide still couldn’t be certain this was it. Rock Bottom. She was waiting for the floor to give out from under her or the ceiling to cave in, for something else to push her further down. This can’t be it, she thought. It never was. (Though, this was the closest she’d come.)

Celeste was in a chair to her left, a Tesco bag filled with snacks on her lap. She’d met Adelaide at the hospital an hour or so earlier and hugged her in a way Adelaide would never forget, so simultaneously careful and caring. It’s a very odd thing to check yourself into the hospital for suicidal ideations—particularly when the receptionist can’t quite make out your hushed words (I. Am. Soo-ih-side-al. Can I just write it down?)—and Adelaide was immeasurably grateful to have her there. In conversations with hospital staff, Celeste helped her fill in the blanks, out loud and on paper, jotting down her number under “Emergency Contact” without a moment’s pause. She was in Ms. Celeste Mode, she explained, adopting her caretaking, primary-school-teaching demeanor, feeding Adelaide pretzels and petting her hair in the waiting room.

Did Rock Bottom even permit visitors?

Whatever the answer, Adelaide was relieved to have Celeste by her side, but just beyond this relief sat a swirl of more sinister emotions. She was sure she’d hit a new low, found a new darkness. Her heart was still graciously beating, and pretzel salt was stinging her tongue, and she didn’t want to be alive anymore. Physically, Adelaide was held together—her thighbone connected to her knee bone, and so on and so forth—but internally, mentally, she was a mess of jagged, disconnected pieces, and she didn’t believe she was capable of putting herself back together. She didn’t want to die, per se, she just wanted to stop existing. Stop being. And, frightening as it was, Death felt like the only avenue by which to get there. A handful of pills and a swig of water and she’d be free—her broken pieces swept up and transferred to another spiritual plane.