She has been sitting in the plastic chair for nine minutes, and I have her the entire time. I have her feet, flat on the floor, pressed exactly as hard as I ask. I have the folder in her lap, four sheets of paper, almost nothing, and I hold each one down so it does not drift.
I have the coffee she did not drink, cooling in its paper cup, level and obedient. I have the whole building around her, the desks, the ceiling tiles, the man across the table who leans back in his chair and trusts me to catch him, and I do.
I am doing everything correctly. And yet she keeps saying she feels weighed down. She says the pressure is a lot. She says there is so much riding on this.
I have checked. I check constantly, it is the only thing I do. The pressure is one hundred and one kilopascals, the same as it is on everyone in the room, the same as it was yesterday. The thing riding on her registers as zero. I can find no mass in it at all.
But I watch her shoulders round forward, I watch her spine curve toward the table, I feel her lean into a load I cannot locate, and I do not understand it, and I hold her anyway.
Her hands shake when she reaches to shake his. That small trembling weight, I have it too. When she stands to leave, whatever it was she carried in, I never felt it, but I feel her walk lighter, so I suppose she set it down.
She will lie awake tonight replaying every word. I will be under her the whole time.
I do not let go.