21
***
For a few days they decided to keep him hospitalized and watch Chester's condition. Of course he insisted he was fine and kept asking to be discharged.
But Nellie McKay, a caregiving professional, thought it was right for him to follow the doctor's advice and rest for a few days. He might panic and collapse again at any time, or stumble and hurt himself.
Chester, however, seemed displeased about that.
They were done for the day because they were scheduled to run tests tomorrow. That meant another familiar period of waiting for the caregiver.
Nellie tidied up as she always did, then sat down beside Chester and picked up her knitting.
"What's that for?"
"Knitting."
"......"
"I started because sitting around doing nothing while caring for someone gets boring. Would you like to try, Mr. Coleman?"
"No. I-"
"Come on, Mr. Coleman, you should try. It's more calming than you'd think."
Nellie pulled yarn and a pair of big needles from her bag like a traveling salesperson showing her wares. When had she brought that along?
Chester answered sulkily.
"Isn't that just fussing about taking anything and everything with you?"
"Not at all. What do you take me for, the capable Nellie McKay? I'll show you how."
She first showed him how to thread the yarn onto the needle.
"Do it like this. Since it's your first time, why not knit a scarf? Just make it long like the one I've started."
Nellie handed him the knitting supplies.
"You're in the hospital anyway and don't have anything else to do."
Well, that was true...
"If only you hadn't been admitted in the first place. Miss McKay."
Nellie was firm.
"That won't do, Mr. Coleman. The doctor did say to take it easy for a few days."
Nellie was knitting something in gray yarn that looked like nothing in particular. What on earth was she making?
Chester squinted, trying to guess, but it was too indistinct to make out.
He wondered if it would become clear after she'd worked on it a bit more. His thoughts were interrupted by what Nellie said next.
"Mr. Coleman, when you finish your scarf, give it to me as a present."
"Why should I do that?"
"Well… I suppose having a goal makes it easier to keep going. Otherwise you might finish it by the end of the year and give it to someone special."
"The end of the year is ages away."
Chester asked, and Nellie answered with a smile.
"You underestimate how long knitting a scarf can take, Mr. Coleman. If you don't knit diligently, it might take you until next year."
"Next year? That's absurd, Miss McKay."
"All the people I've recommended knitting to usually say within a week, 'I'll just buy a scarf instead!' and give up. Can you manage longer than a week, Mr. Coleman?"
Nellie's provocation landed exactly where she wanted it, and Chester took the bait.
"I'd never say something like that. Of course I'll finish it."
"That's the right attitude, Mr. Coleman."
At her words, something in Chester ignited, a pointless competitive spirit.
"If I finish it by the end of the year, then what will you do?"
"What will I do? You'll be the person who completed a scarf, of course."
"……"
"If you truly insist, I'll grant you one wish. That much is fine."
Nellie said this as though generously offering him a reward. Chester smiled as if pleased.
"Very well."
***
Knitting wasn't as difficult as he'd expected. It was simply incredibly tedious and repetitive.
But it did have its advantages. They said it was good for peace of mind, indeed, while he knitted, his mind went blank.
The battlefield that surfaced whenever he closed his eyes…
The faces of fallen comrades…
The young soldier who died from his bullet…
The people and memories of the past, none of them appeared.
On nights when he couldn't sleep, he knitted. Truthfully, he never slept, so it was every night.
He kept a small lamp lit and stayed up through the night… nodding off only to start knitting again.
Sitting quietly alone in the hospital room, Chester knitted the same pattern over and over with brown yarn.
He had chosen the brown yarn himself. Even though Nellie insisted that she should get to choose since she'd be the one receiving it, Chester brushed her off.
Instead of the pink yarn Nellie so eagerly wanted, he chose brown.
"Mr. Coleman. I don't like brown. It's the same color as my eyes."
Chester didn't answer that that was precisely why he chose it.
"Pink doesn't suit you, Miss McKay. And I'm not giving it to you anyway."
He tossed the reply off casually.
Because the patient was now hospitalized, Nellie reported to the hospital instead of 331 Fitz Street.
After a long time, she was doing the work of a real caregiver again.
She was used to it, she had sometimes accompanied Mrs. Hudson to the hospital before.
Her days were straightforward, attend to the patient, accompany him through tests, hear the results, and then evaluate the knitting he'd worked on through the night.
Of course, that last part was trivial.
"There's a stitch dropped here, Mr. Coleman."
Nellie pointed with her finger, a small hole had formed there.
Chester certainly hadn't seen that hole when he'd been working just before dawn.
"……"
Chester bit his lip hard.
It must have happened while he dozed off for a moment.
Nellie neatly patched up the hole and beamed. Once she mended it, the hole was no longer visible. The short, chunky brown piece of fabric was gradually taking on the shape of a scarf.
"Knitting is really wonderful for this reason. You can fix mistakes like this."
"……"
"Don't you think so, Mr. Coleman? If only we could unravel all the tangled parts of life and re-knit them, that would be amazing."
She smiled brightly, knowing nothing. Her glass-clear brown eyes somehow looked like autumn sunlight.
Sunlight could never be brown… yet.
If he really could undo all the tangled knots and start again from the beginning… Chester Coleman would never have ended up so broken.
Everything would have gone properly.
He wouldn't have gone to war, there might not have been a war at all.
The world would have been peaceful and beautiful.
Unfair and unjust things would still have existed somewhere, but not for him.
Chester Coleman would still be living in the great Whitedale estate, without a limp, surrounded by a butler, gardener, housemaids, a cook, a gatekeeper, and a chauffeur.
Every day he would slick back his hair with pomade, spray on heavy cologne, wear new tailored suits, and spend the nights dancing and singing.
But the world wasn't safe.
It was unfair, ugly.
Ironically, Chester thought he'd become an adult by going through the war.
Not that he'd planned to become an adult that way.
Chester let out a dry laugh, like a sigh.
"Why are you smiling?"
"It's nothing."
Nellie asked innocently, but Chester only shook his head.
If he had never gone to war, he would have lived forever without knowing the other side of the world. Would that life have been happy, in its own way?
From where he stood now, he couldn't know.
Because he had already been through war. Because war had destroyed everything, had trampled over him and pierced straight through him.
Because he had become someone completely different from the Chester Coleman of that time.
He once believed absurdity wasn't his share. Good things, the very best, were always meant for him.
But now he knew. At every moment, somewhere, something goes wrong.
Chester Coleman was broken. He no longer danced, no longer sang.
Sometimes he wanted to ask someone, why me?
Why did he have to suffer like this?
If anyone knew the answer, he wanted them to tell him.
So that thought, If only life could be unraveled and re-knit like yarn, was a false premise.
What's already tangled can't be undone.
It can only be left as it is.
"Mr. Coleman, I'll guess what you were smiling at."
Nellie laid the gray knitting quietly across her lap.
"You were thinking, 'Life is already tangled, and it can't be like knitting,' weren't you?"
Chester didn't answer, because she was right.
"And you thought I was childish for thinking that way, didn't you?"
"I didn't think that, Miss McKay."
"Still, I was right that you think it's tangled."
"……"
"But Mr. Coleman, I think life is just like knitting."
"Even looking at me? Someone who faints from panic, who can't sleep at night, who even limps? Even looking at a person like that, you think the tangled can still be undone?"
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