Christmas had thrown up all over New York.

Everywhere I looked, faux snowflakes sparkled, littered in that bluish tinted glitter, strung up from wreaths and sprinkled in tinsel.

Santa existed on every corner, ringing bells for charity, begging for food with a cardboard sign or groping unsuspecting women in their hipster sunglasses fedoras.

Holy shit. Millennial Santa. Fucking kill me now.

I cringed, ducking inside Macy’s and instantly regretting my choice to go out that day but I gritted my teeth and surged onward.

Pulling out my cell, I glance at the notes in my iPhone.

Mom, Dad, Asher, Maggie, Baby

It was a pathetic shopping list.

Although last year, I was drunk in Vegas for Christmas, I thought wryly.

For a second, I expected a pang of melancholy to hit me. I waited for the desire to slip out of the overrun department store and into the lightly falling snow to consume me so much that I would jump in my Audi and start driving to the nearest casino.

But it didn’t.

I could only stand in the lobby, staring at my now black screen and think about how Christmas was going to be this year.

Maggie had shut me out completely.

She didn’t take any of my calls and she responded to my texts only when I asked about the baby, often in one word.

I knew better than to just stop by the restaurant even though I know that’s exactly what the old me would do.

But her health was paramount and came secondary to my ego.

I had fucked up – again. She had every right to be livid with me.

Yet a part of me couldn’t help but be pissed with Maggie too.

I mean, she had seen how much I had changed; I knew she had. Couldn’t she see that I didn’t just piss away our kid’s future? Wasn’t it clear I was trying to do something good for all of us?

Those were rhetorical questions.

If I hadn’t given her so many reasons to doubt me in the past, maybe I’d have had a right to be upset she didn’t think better of me.

“Sir, you have been standing there for a rather long time. Can I help you find something?”

I looked up into a pair of crystalline eyes and for a moment, I thought it was Maggie staring back at me.

You’re losing your fucking mind. This woman looks nothing like Maggie.

I flashed her a quick smile.

“Actually yeah,” I replied. “I need help shopping for my wife and baby.”

I didn’t even feel bad calling her my wife aloud. After all, Maggie wasn’t there to yell at me.

And it was Christmas. If I was going to spend it alone, I could at least pretend, couldn’t I?

* * *

The call came in at ten thirty. I had already been in bed for fifteen minutes, knowing that I had an interview at nine the following morning with the owners of a new restaurant opening in Queens.

It was a sous-chef position but at least it was a job and I was determined to get it.

My display read “private number” and I contemplated ignoring it but something wouldn’t allow me to let it go.

“Hello?”

“It’s Regan. Maggie’s in the hospital.”

Her normally reserved, tight-ass voice had a slight note of panic in it.

I jumped up, flicking on the bedside lamp.

“Which hospital? What happened?”

“Sinai. I think she’s going into labor.”

The words sent a chill of apprehension through me and I was already throwing on any items of clothes I could find, forsaking the closet and digging through the laundry basket that was closer.

Maggie was thirty-five weeks now, still too early to deliver although my research had told me that our daughter could still be born healthy, even if premature.

“I’m on my way,” I told my former sister-in-law. “Tell her I’m on my way.”

I disconnected the call, not wanting to hear whatever crushing response she might have for me.

Fear plucked at my heartstrings and a thousand questions swelled through my mind as I ordered an Uber and hurried out of my apartment.

The last thing I wanted to worry about was finding parking and I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to drive with the blood rushing through my veins so intensely.

It had started to snow heavily in the past hour, a fact that had escaped my attention until I waited at the top of the stairs, looking up and down the street for my ride.

Thick snowflakes landed in my hair and on the wool coat I had hastily thrown on over a pair of track pants and old LA Lakers sweatshirt.

I was ninety percent sure my socks were mismatched but that was the least of my concerns. At least I’d thought to put socks on.

Come on, I begged the Uber driver silently. Hurry up.

Finally, a black Honda Civic appeared, slowly making its way toward me through the freshly packed white stuff and stopped to let me in.

“Mount Sinai,” I instructed and blissfully, he pulled away without much conversation.

I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

As we drove, the snow seemed to fall harder, the blazing lights of the sleepless city enhanced by the reds and whites of string lights laced through the lampposts and around the medians, boasting the impending holiday in a sea of sparkles and pine.

Somehow, I was transported back to my childhood in Long Island.

In my mind’s eye, the window was no longer the dirty glass of a ride share but the bay window of the house in which I grew up with Asher and we were no more than eight and ten, squealing with happiness as we tore through our mounds of Christmas presents under the tree.

I could smell the apple cider my mom made with painstaking pride, hear my father reprimanding us gently as we argued over who owned the Super NES.

A feeling of nostalgia swept through me as the scene shifted and it was the first Christmas after Maggie and I married, our sad little apartment in Spanish Harlem with the tree I had struggled to bring up the four flights of stairs.

“It’s huge!” Maggie laughed, staring at the bedraggled tree. “I thought we agreed on a small one! I thought we were getting a Charlie Brown tree, not a—” She waved her hand. “Lucy!”

“It was the smallest one they had!” I protested, aghast that it took up half our living room. “Crap. What are we going to do now?”

She smiled at me, her eyes shining with affection.

“We’re going to set it up and put the couch in our bedroom,” she replied. “And then we’re going to make love underneath it every night.”

I looked at her, a feigned look of shock on my face.

“But…what will the angel think?” I gasped, shaking my head.

“Her job isn’t to think,” Maggie quipped back. “Only to watch.”

“Hey buddy, front entrance or -?”

The driver shattered my reverie and I cleared my throat, which was filling with emotion.

“Emergency, I think,” I muttered, blinking quickly.

If this baby is born today, if this is going to be her first Christmas, her memories are not going to start badly. I want her looking out a window in forty years, smiling at the good times, not remembering that her father was an asshole and her mother did it alone. She deserves better than that.

I thanked the driver and jumped out of the car, hurrying into the hospital, a new memory filling my head.

It was months earlier and I was there with Marcus, learning that Maggie’s health was at risk and risking our baby’s.

What would I learn today?

Hospitals were beginning to have a bad connotation with me.

“I’m looking for Margaret O’Dowd. She might be in the maternity ward,” I said to the nurse nervously.

She eyed me for a long moment, a faint flash of recognition in her face.

“I remember you,” she said slowly. “You were obnoxious and drunk the last time you came in here.”

Months ago, I probably would have bristled at the comment, argued and tried to save face.

But she was right.

I nodded, shifted my eyes downward.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’m sorry about that. I was out of line.”

She raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly.

“The maternity ward is on the fourth floor,” she offered, a kind note in her voice. “Your wife has just been admitted.”

I nodded.

“Thank you.”

I rushed off toward the stairs, taking them two at a time until I arrived on the fourth floor,

Regan and Cathy were huddled together in the lobby area but neither rose to greet me as I made my way over.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Any news?”

Regan’s mouth became a firm line and I could tell she didn’t want to tell me anything but Cathy sighed.

“Her blood pressure spiked suddenly and she started to bleed. She called an ambulance and then called me,” Maggie’s mom explained. “We haven’t been able to see her.”

I spun and headed toward the nurse at reception.

“I am looking for information on Maggie O’Dowd,” I said firmly. “I’m the father of the baby. I need to know how she’s doing.”

The nurse eyed him before turning back to the computer, her brow knitting.

I did not take that for a good sign.

“What’s going on?” I choked. “Is she okay? What’s happening?”

“The doctor will be with you as soon as possible,” the nurse replied and as much as I wanted to scream and shake answers out of her, I knew that would only lead to my immediate ejection from the hospital.

Instead, I grunted and turned away, gnawing on my lower lip.

“They’ve told you nothing at all?” I asked my former in-laws but before they could answer, I saw Maggie’s OB-GYN making her way through the hall, her face tired as she made her way toward us.

“Dr. Patel!” I gasped, relieved to see a familiar and moderately friendly face. “How is Maggie?”

She tried to smile but I could see the concern in her face.

“I’m glad you’re here, Silas,” she sighed, glancing nervously at Cathy and Regan. “Can you come with me?”

“Wait a second!” Regan screeched, jumping to her feet. “We have just as much as a right to know what’s going on!”

Dr. Patel ignored her and led me away from the lobby into the interior of the hospital, my heart racing wildly.

“Please,” I moaned. “Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”

Dr. Patel opened and stood back, allowing me to enter.

“See for yourself,” she replied and my mouth dropped open as I peered inside.