What she lent me wasn't money — it was the courage to climb out of the pit

Two years ago two things happened at once. My name was on the company's layoff list, and my health check came back with a thyroid nodule that needed follow-up.

For a while I shut myself in the apartment. Resumes went out and nothing came back. The follow-up was three weeks away, and three weeks is enough time to rehearse every bad outcome a hundred times. Friends sent comfort and I answered none of it — not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't lift my hands to type.

Only Zhou Zhou. Not one word of comfort.

The first thing she did was mail me a box of instant noodles and a box of milk with a note: "Eat well, drink well. Even if the sky falls, eat first." The second thing was a message at 8:30 every morning. Not a greeting. An assignment.

Day one: "Go downstairs, walk one lap, and bring me back a photo of a flower."

Day three: "Fix up your resume and send it to me. I'll look at it. I'm a good judge of people."

Day seven: "Apply to three today. Then go and play. I'll take you to a movie. I pick a bad one, you do the complaining."

Day fifteen: "I'm coming with you to the follow-up. You just book it. Leave the rest to me."

She came. During the two hours in the waiting room she talked nonstop about the gossip in her department, and halfway through I noticed I was laughing. When the report came out my hands were shaking. She plucked it away, read it, and announced in a flat voice: "Benign tendency. Follow up regularly. Done. Hotpot for lunch."

Walking out of the hospital gate I looked at her back and my nose stung. She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. Without turning around she said, "Don't cry. Hotpot's spicy. Swollen eyes would be a waste."

Later I found work, and I told her about that stretch. I said, you know, in those three weeks I had planned to just rot. She waved a hand. "I didn't pull you out. I handed you one small step a day. You walked down by yourself."

A real friend may not pull you out of the pit. She squats at the rim and hands you one step a day, and waits with you until you walk out on your own.

Last year her business failed and she closed the studio she had run for two years. My turn to send assignments at 8:30: "Go downstairs, walk one lap." "Write up your post-mortem and send it to me." "Day seven: come out. Hotpot's on me. I pick the bad movie."

She sent back a laughing-crying face. "Are you paying a vow?"

I said, "Yes. Principal and interest."

What the two of us have is not dramatic. It comes down to this: I know what is happening to you, I don't say it out loud, and I don't step away. I break myself into small pieces and hand you one a day until you have the strength to stand up.

A few days ago I was scrolling back through old messages and found those three weeks of assignments. I read them start to finish. It was like reading a medical file, except what got cured was not the nodule. It was a person's collapsed spirit.

Then I mentioned those three weeks to Zhou Zhou, and she said something I did not expect. "I was having a hard time too. The studio had just lost money. Half of those 8:30 messages were for you and half were for me. When you pull someone else up, you're climbing too." So the morning lists were steps that two people at the bottom of two pits handed each other. Neither of us saved the other. Neither of us let go.