L wrote to me last night to say that C had overdosed while on the phone to her and was now in hospital. I feel a curious inertia about this. I could see it coming a while back so I'd let the distance grow, becoming a 'bad friend' in some respects.

L was on the adrenaline rollercoaster, high on the magnitude of saving someone's life, the deferred fear and panic, anger as it hit her what C is doing to herself and her loved ones, and the love and pain for C herself, for what she's enduring that is taking her here.

I could see L so badly wanting to do the right thing, and then wanting the happy ending for having done the right thing. But C was so drugged up that she couldn't even remember the phone call, and had no idea how come the fire department had turned up. She's in for a long stay.

Although I feel a certain kind of 'nothing' about this I've been thinking about it on and off all day. I feel this vague sickness and a glimmer of opening for my friend, a desire to reach out to her, and then it gets squashed. Is there a way to tell her that I care about her, that I want her to be well?

But I don't want to talk to the C who would do this to herself. I don't want to see it or know about it. I've met that C before and she is vicious. Lately she has been holding the keys to the body and is in the process of starving the body, abusing it, killing it off if she can. I can't speak to her and pretend that is not who I am talking to.

And what do I have to say to that person? It is not a conversation I am qualified for. Yet as I write this I think - well, that is her argument, it's the one she's trapped in, the one she's having with her doctors and shrinks and so on. Maybe I can leave it to them, and still just give her - the whole C - that one small message, that I care about her and wish her well.