A reporter grapples with the suicide of a source:

The reporter-source relationship is a complicated one that defies easy description. It borrows a little from the salesman-buyer relationship, the therapist-patient relationship, the police officer-witness relationship, sometimes even the growing intimacy of a friendship. We work hard to gain access and trust, and generally we avoid doing anything that stops a source from talking once she gets started.

“How are you now?” I asked at the time.

“I’m suffering horribly . . . but I’m not suicidal,” she said. “It’s a soothing thing. I don’t really want to do it. But it helps me calm down, it helps me sleep to think about the possibilities to end the suffering.”

If I had possessed some sort of device that could peer inside her brain and pick up some biological trace amongst the billions of nerve cells and circuits that would indicate she was likely to commit suicide, would I have stopped the interview?