When Celta left the hospital in March, her father had left her some money to get started, and she was released to a single-room apartment in Augusta. I came to see her there. I had bought her a pretty shortsleeve shirt with a picture of a cat on it—I’d brought it to her while she was still in the hospital, and she had liked it. It was like having a girlfriend, to be doing this.

When I arrived, I found her intoxicated. Passed out. I couldn’t understand the situation, and I had no way to reach her. I felt so overwhelmed and frustrated. I pulled out that shirt I’d bought her, the one that made her smile, and I said, “Remember this?” There was no answer to give. I left the shirt draped over the dresser so she would see it when she got up, and I told her I would be back the next day.

I had been seeing her every single day when she was in the hospital. Now I wondered whether I would find her sober when I showed up. Again—this was not a conventional relationship.

When I came back, she seemed so bad. She told me she had to leave the apartment; she couldn’t pay the rent. I had no clarity of mind to problem-solve it. Because of her weight and her condition, I took her to a hospital—a regular hospital, not the one where she had been. After she was put in a room, I left for a little while and headed home to think. It seemed like she would be okay in the emergency room for a while.

Then I got a call telling me to come pick her up. They couldn’t keep her overnight. I heard my own voice turn to pleading. “What can I do?” I asked.

“We are not responsible for her,” they said.

She didn’t have an apartment, and I didn’t know what to do. So I took Celta to a motel in Augusta. She was sober now, and we spoke for some time.

“You can say you finally spent the night with a woman,” she said, joking.

We had not “slept together,” as they say. This day didn’t even allow for cuddling. And here is the thing I want understood: Celta knew every single thing about me. If she had been the person others later warned me she was—if she hadn’t loved me—she would have held all of that knowledge like a weapon. She never did. Not once. That alone told me who she really was.

“I’d better get home,” I said. “My parents think I’m working.” It felt good to laugh, even there, even then.

The next day I showed up at the motel and her room was empty. I walked around frantically looking for her. A light rain was falling. The place didn’t look inviting in daylight; they hadn’t kept it up. I passed people, listening at the doors of nearby rooms. I was never nosy, but I was desperate. “Have you seen a small woman?” I asked at the reception desk, then anyone walking by. No one was much help.

I walked around the front, which faced the highway, and I fell to my knees—more collapsing than praying. In a voice that was audible but not loud, I said, “Please. Please help me.”

When I came back around, a woman I’d seen earlier said, “You’re looking for a small woman? Come this way—I think she went in a room over here.”

We knocked. She was there, and I could see beer bottles. The voices in the room said nothing had happened, that she’d passed out, that she’d been looking for something to drink. I thought: does she look like someone who should be drinking? Back in her room, I told her I didn’t know what to do.

She said her mother lived in Athens. I said I would take her there. It was about an hour and a half away. We weren’t sure her mother would take her in, but I felt we had to try. She knew the way. Don’t call, I thought. Just go. Just show up.

We found the house and I knocked. Her mother saw us, and her first words were, “She can’t stay here.”

I didn’t say anything. But the look on my face must have spoken for me—desperate, pleading, tears running down. “I... I don’t know what to do,” I managed. “I tried other things. I’m scared.”

She opened the door, and we went in.

“I’m Bruce.”

“I’m Faye.” She added, “We’ve had problems and fought before.” She was small herself, but not sickly.

“Thank you for helping. I don’t know what to do.”

I gave Celta a hug, got her phone number, and told her I’d be back to visit as soon as I could. I said goodbye.

Soon after, her father came from out of state and rented an apartment for her in Athens. There would be one more episode of drinking before things settled into what I’d call normal life—months later, a binge, and then it stopped. But that was the turning. All of this had been compressed into two or three days in the middle of March, the days when she was passed from one place to the next with no one but me to carry her.

It was around this time that I met a couple, friends of the family. The woman told me that Celta only used people, that she could not love anyone, that I shouldn’t be an “enabler.” People with substance use disorders can be like that, it’s true—using people, manipulating, acting as if they have no morals. But I am observant about the intentions of others. Celta never asked me to do anything I didn’t want to do. She was genuinely concerned about how I felt, about my happiness. The warning didn’t fit the person I knew.