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The subway car shrieks to a stop at my station, and I have to use Herculean effort to pull myself up out of the seat and drag my tired ass out the doors and up the steps. There are only a few people who get off with me, having partied a little too hard the night before.
It’s just a two-block walk to my building—or what will now be referred to as the scene of the crime turned miracle of life. Part of me knows I’m crazy for chancing a ride in another elevator at this point, but twelve floors of stairs is just a little too much to attempt while I’m this bone-weary. Besides, the elevator at the hospital managed not to fail me. Maybe I’ve met my quota.
But, hey, if it stops, it stops. I’ll curl up on the floor and sleep.
The cart dings its arrival, and I step inside the same elevator I first found myself in yesterday afternoon. It’s not the one in which Maria gave birth, but the memory of the whole thing comes rushing back all the same. It feels like just moments ago, and at the same time, feels like a lifetime has passed.
A wave of warmth washes through my chest as I remember how strong she was. Courageous. Determined. It’s not every day that a woman is faced with the magnitude of obstacles she’s been, but it’s even rarer that they do it with as much dignity and grace as her.
I swear, she’s the strongest woman I know. And I’m a fucking Winslow. I know a lot of strong-as-hell women.
I wish I’d had this same foresight at the hospital—I wish I’d had the awareness to tell her how awed I am by what she managed to do in this very building. By what she’s managing every day, despite the grief I know she’s carrying.
It’s almost surreal as the elevator arrives at my floor and opens, and I step off with a lingering look back. I don’t know that the short trip to my apartment will ever feel the same.
I mean, holy shit. I delivered a baby. Like MacGyver or Chuck Norris or motherfucking Superman.
You’d think I would’ve been scared shitless, but I don’t know, between seeing how strong Maria was in that moment and feeling the poignancy of what we were experiencing together, I just…couldn’t be anything but the man she deserved to have by her side.
A quick trip down the hallway and a turn of my key and I’m inside the solace of my apartment. It’s spacious—both for New York and bachelorhood—but it’s the only place that ever felt like a good fit. It’s richly traditional in style, very old New York, and just snobby enough to make me feel proud of everything I’ve accomplished.
It’s dumb, really, but sometimes this apartment is what reminds me my life hasn’t been a waste. It’s so different from what could have been; and yet, it has the memories of Lexi taking some of her first steps by the floor-to-ceiling windows and Ty and Jude fistfighting when they found out they’d gone on two dates with the same woman several years ago.
It’s the home of several family Christmas dinners and has been a haven for my drunken, sloppy brothers on more than one occasion. It’s the door my sister knocked on in the middle of the night when she didn’t know what to do to comfort Lexi at the age of four—now known as the year she wouldn’t stop crying.
This apartment is full of all the echoes of the decision I made a decade and a half ago. For me, my family is everything. They’re all I’ve ever needed. And for the longest time, with the decades-long absence of our good-for-nothing father, they’ve needed me, too.
But it feels so quiet now. There’s no baby crying, no mess to tend to, no one to take care of.
It feels odd—almost eerie, really—and I can’t put my finger on why. Yesterday morning when I left, the walls felt close, the space felt cozy. But right now, it feels like they’re retreating, opening into a chasm or a void without anything to fill it up.
My sister is married now, her husband one of the good ones, and my niece Lexi is well past needing her uncle Remy for much of anything besides entertainment. Even my three brothers have grown up and settled down.
It’s different; my role in their lives is different. And I imagine, the role of this apartment and the memories it carries going forward are going to be different too.
Stripping off my torn and dirtied white T-shirt, I pull out the sliding cabinet in the kitchen and pitch it into the garbage. I don’t think there’s any salvaging it at this point.
But before I can close the cabinet, something grips me in the gut and makes me pause. I reach into the can and take it back out, shaking it out and tossing it in the laundry room instead.
