My slipknot demonstration was a disaster.
My hands—which could tape a stick blade in thirty seconds and had never fumbled a puck drop in twelve years—suddenly forgot how to hold yarn. The loop twisted wrong, and the working end went the wrong direction. I had to start over twice before I managed something that resembled the picture in Margaret's instruction book.
"Like this," I said, holding up my mangled slipknot. "Except, you know, better."
The nurse raised her hand. "Should it look like a noose?"
"Definitely not."
"Good. Mine looks like a noose."
"Mine too," Dorothy chirped.
Gary's hands shook when he tried to form the loop. Not like Bryce's teenage fumbling—this was different. Frustrated. Hetried three times, failed three times, then set the needles down hard enough that they clattered against the table.
"Can't get my damn fingers to work," he muttered.
"It takes time," I said.
"Time's what I've got now." His voice was flat. "Not much else."
I sat down next to Gary. "What'd you do? Before?"
"Machine operator. Thirty years. Same line, same shift." He picked up the needles again, stared at them like they were written in a foreign language. "Sounds stupid, but I knew every sound that line made. Could tell when something was about to go wrong by listening."
"That's not stupid."
"It's useless now." He tried the slipknot again. The yarn twisted wrong. "Thirty years of knowing one thing, and now—" He stopped. Set the needles down more carefully this time. "Sorry. Didn't come here to complain."
"You came here to learn something new", I said quietly.
He looked at me then, and I saw what I'd been trying not to see all day. The fear that when the thing you'd built your life around disappeared, you would go with it.
I reached over and adjusted his grip on the needles. "Here. Hold them like this. Not too tight—you're strangling the yarn."
"Story of my life," he said, but there was almost a smile.
I moved around the circle, helping Dorothy untangle a mess and showing Harold how to hold the needles despite his stiff fingers. Bryce caught on fast once he stopped trying to muscle the yarn.
"How long have you been playing hockey?" Bryce asked while I corrected his tension.
"Forever. But this—" I gestured at the yarn, needles, and circle of people watching me. "This keeps my head from exploding between games."
Bryce's eyebrows rose. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Have you ever tried to sit still for five minutes after getting hit?" I cast on a few stitches, muscle memory taking over. "Your brain wants to replay every hit, every missed pass, and everything you should've done differently. When you're knitting—" The rhythm settled into my hands. "Hard to spiral when you're counting stitches."
"Knitting therapy," Dorothy said.
"Pretty much."
I waited for jokes and chirps about the big, scary enforcer who needed his emotional support projects.
Instead, the nurse nodded. "Makes sense. I do sudoku between shifts for the same reason."
Gary was working slowly, methodically. His hands still shook, but he had two stitches now. Then three. Each one uneven and loose, but holding together.
By the end of the hour, he had six wobbly stitches. They weren't pretty, but they held.
