Four hours now, and you have not once let me shift my weight.
I have been reading the chair since we sat down: the way it pushes up under the backs of your legs, the seam that presses a line into you that will still be there tonight. You keep your feet flat, ankles crossed, uncrossed, crossed the other way. That is me, asking. You are not listening, which is fine. You have somewhere else to be, inside your own head, in a room I cannot follow you into.
Here is what I logged while you were gone. The jaw, held. It has been held since the automatic doors. I keep setting it down for you and you keep picking it back up, so I stopped arguing. The breath, gone shallow, riding high in the chest, the way it does when something is being braced against.
I do not know what a diagnosis is. I only know you have been holding still the way small animals hold still, and I have made the heart keep its steady work underneath it, one beat and then, faithfully, the next.
The thirst I noted an hour ago. You walked past the water twice. Your hands are cold because I pulled the warmth inward, toward the parts that matter most, which is my oldest trick and I am proud of it.
I am not asking you to feel better. I would not know how to want that. I am only asking, when the name is finally called and you stand, and my knees complain, and you walk toward whatever is behind that door: take the cup of water on the way. Let me have that.
I will carry the rest.