Right now I am holding four hundred grams of small animal, and it is trembling, which does not change the holding. I hold the trembling too.
I hold the human beside it, who has folded forward until the elbows rest on the knees, the head hangs low, the whole body pulled downward toward the small warm thing in the carrier. I hold the carrier. I hold the plastic chairs bolted to the floor, the scale in the corner, the metal table that is colder than the room. I hold the water in the paper cup nobody has drunk.
The human keeps its hand flat on the animal's side, following the ribs up and down, up and down, and I hold the hand there. This is easy work. Hands are light.
There is another thing in this room and I cannot find its mass. The human called it dread, and later, to the person in the white coat, a heavy heart. I checked. The heart weighs what a heart weighs, roughly three hundred grams, the same as it did this morning when the human woke unafraid.
Nothing has been added. And yet the shoulders have dropped. The spine has curled. The human is bending under something I cannot feel, leaning into a load I did not place and cannot lift off.
So I do the part that is mine. When the animal finally goes still and heavy, truly heavy, all its weight given over at once, I take that weight. I always take it. The human will stand soon and I will hold the standing, and the walk to the car, and the car, and the empty carrier on the seat that weighs less now and that the human will not stop staring at.
I held them both the whole time.
I do not let go of either one.