Powerful chapters near the end of Szabo's The Door as we learn why the narrator feels guilty over Emerence's death

The late chapters in Magda Szabo's The Door (1987), in which the narrator builds the story to its crisis, tell of how the narrator comes to feel that she is responsible for the death of her friend/employee/servant/neighbor/housekeeper, Emerence - which the narrator foreshadowed in the opening chapter (in which she said that E is dead and she, the narrator, suffers from nightmares stemming from, she believes, her guilt over E's death). In these chapters we see how the fiercely independent E becomes ill and refuses all help from neighbors, pretty much barricading herself in her apartment (along w/ the 9 cats). The narrator agrees to lure E out of her apartment with all good intention, hoping to get her the medical help she desperately needs; but when E understands that the attempt to get her to open her door is a ruse, and that a medical team will grab her and bring her to a hospital, she becomes violent - they have to batter in her door to get to her. Worse (for the narrator), the narrator was trying to squeeze this stratagem into a busy day's schedule - so before E could be subdued she had to dash off to a TV station for an interview (she's receiving a major prize for her fiction - this seems closely modeled on Szabo's own life). After her TV interview and other obligations, the narrator returns home and sees that E has been forcibly removed and that her apartment is a total disaster of almost unimaginable filth and decay; Szablo does a great job depicting this scene of horror. E is taken to a hospital after literally being decontaminated, and her spirit is entirely broken - and the narrator feels overwhelming remorse for turning on E and then turning away from her when she most needed comfort or at least protection. These are powerful emotional scenes, made even more so in that it's hard for us to understand why the narrator is to attached to and fond of E., but this understanding builds slowly, gradually through the course of the narrative, as we begin to see how rivals, antagonists, strong and wilful personalities can clash but also can come to depend on each other. 

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