(Author’s note: I wrote this last summer after a profound encounter in an unusual place. Names and details have been changed. If you’re the kind of person who might find a phrase like “In the Psych Ward” triggering, consider this your fair warning.)

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My friend Raya is in the psych ward of a local hospital. Raya isn’t her real name (I’ve borrowed it from a college acquaintance, who I hope won’t mind), and if I explained how I met her, it would come too close to revealing who she is.

At any rate, Raya is in the psych ward, and we hope she’ll be allowed out within the next day or so, but no one can tell for sure. She’s been hurtling towards this moment since sometime last week, though in truth she’s been battling her demons for longer than I’ve been alive. In the six or so months I’ve known her she told me enough of her story to show that life has never been easy for her, and even in the best of times Raya isn’t always completely rational. This isn’t the first time she’s voluntarily committed herself. She’s the third of my friends who’s done so in the last 18 months. Or at least the third who’s admitted it.

Raya is in the psych ward, and I can’t help feeling like I could have done more for her. Yesterday Raya called me and frantically asked if I could watch her kids so she could attend a therapy session by phone. I was about to leave for lunch with former coworkers whom I dearly missed, and I told her I couldn’t make it. Later, I had a minor emergency myself and called her. In the midst of my own panic I didn’t notice the strain in her voice, or I ignored it, or I thought that I could provide her a useful distraction by asking her for help. It’s possible this was not one of the better decisions I’ve ever made.

Raya went in last night, and I want her to come home soon, but only when she’s ready, and who knows when that will be. I called her house this morning, vaguely worried that something might have happened to her, and when her husband picked up my heart stopped. He said she hadn’t been reacting well to a new combination of anti-depressants, and she would heal faster without the distractions of home life. He didn’t mention she’s suicidal, but she is. I’m just glad she’s safe.

Raya is on the seventh floor, behind a series of long, sharp-angled hallways, sturdy locked doors, and secret codes. Her neighbors suffer delusions of grandeur, or just delusions. She laughs gently at a man who calls himself the next Messiah and wants to built a crystal palace in Jerusalem. She says he can tell the future. I want to ask him about a phone interview tentatively scheduled for tomorrow.

Raya looks 10 years older than the last time I saw her, and she looks deflated, like she’s lost too much weight too quickly. She can’t carry a conversation for more than a minute, and the few sentences she manages to string together indicate she’s been crashing for years, and that her marriage is in trouble. Raya has children whom I occasionally babysit; while she rambles about losing her keys in a nearby city over the weekend I find myself thinking about the kids growing up with the stigma of severe depression hanging over their heads. I’m pretty sure that Raya’s mother killed herself. Or her grandmother. Maybe both.

Raya is going to come home soon, but her husband is going out of town next week, and I wonder who will take care of the kids. Lately I’ve been having problems of my own and I wondered what it would be like to go into a hospital myself, if only to avoid the real world for a while. Looking at Raya I realize that a psych ward is no place to avoid anything. She is fully aware; she can’t not be. The blinders we adopt for ourselves to avoid melting down every day are gone for her, until she gets new drugs or more therapy or finds her source of personal strength. She is suicidal but she says she never had a plan. I don’t really believe her; everyone has a plan, deep down.

Raya is in the psych ward and I wonder what would happen if it was me, and I’m glad it’s not. I want her to come home, though, so I can stop worrying about her kids and maybe start hanging out at her house again. She invites me to go swimming with her and her kids when I’m not working, and she’s always pushing me to apply for jobs I’m not sure I’m qualified for, and as much as I hate my life sometimes, she’s always willing to listen to me—even in the psych ward, even when she’s jittery and can’t focus and her eyes leak tears almost constantly and I’m not sure she’s slept in a week or more.

Raya is in the psych ward, but still, when I tell her about my phone interview tomorrow, she smiles broadly and squeezes my hand and says a quick prayer to Anyone who’ll listen for me. I haven’t believed in God in a long time, but on the way home, I find myself praying for her, praying she doesn’t really have a plan, praying she puts her blinders back on, praying she can come home.