Hotel Vendome (35 page)

Once they were in the surgical suite, everything moved quickly, too quickly for Natalie to even know what was going on. They turned the epidural up and numbed her completely. Her stomach was being swabbed, three pediatricians came in, three incubators appeared out of nowhere, and a sheet was put up just past her shoulders so she couldn’t see what was going on, and they asked Hugues to stand near her head. Both her arms were strapped onto boards with IVs into them, so he could no longer hold her hand, but he bent to kiss her face, and she smiled up at him through her tears. And then things started moving even faster. One of the heartbeats had become irregular on the monitor, and the doctor in charge of the team told her they were starting the procedure.

Hugues sat down on a stool next to her, and the monitors kept bleeping, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could only hear two heartbeats now instead of three, but he didn’t want to ask, and he didn’t want to frighten Natalie, who was terrified enough as it was.

There was a constant exchange between the fleet of doctors, and then suddenly as he pressed his face next to Natalie’s, they both heard a tiny wail coming from the other side of the sheet.

“You have a little boy,” the doctor announced proudly as both Hugues and Natalie burst into a sob at the same time, and a pediatrician whisked him away to examine him and put him in the incubator. And then within seconds there was another tiny wail. This one sounded stronger. “And a baby girl.” Hugues and Natalie were beaming through their tears. Neither of them could hear the monitor then, and Hugues was wondering if they had turned it down, but for a long time there was no third wail. And then there was a rhythmic slapping sound, and stern exchanges between the doctors.

“What’s happening?” Natalie asked in a choked voice. And none of them answered. But without being told, they sensed what was happening. There was still no third wail, and they could hear both of their other babies crying. The doctor came around the sheet then and looked at them both, and the moment they saw her face, they knew.

“We tried to save your second little girl. Her heart gave out. She was just under two pounds. We’ve been trying to revive her … I’m sorry,” she said, looking genuinely distressed, as Natalie broke into wracking sobs, and Hugues gently stroked her face, as his own tears fell onto her cheeks. They had two healthy babies, but they had lost the third. The bittersweetness of life, to receive two enormous gifts and have another taken away.

The team was sewing Natalie up, and the doctor came back to speak to them. “The little girl you lost is beautiful. She’s all cleaned up. Would you like to see her and hold her for a few minutes?” She knew from experience that sometimes people that didn’t imagined all kinds of things, that the baby had been stolen or switched or hideously deformed. Natalie nodded her head in answer to the question, and a few minutes later they freed her arms and brought her the baby that had been stillborn. She had a sweet little face, and black hair like Hugues, and she looked like she was sleeping in her mother’s arms, as Natalie sobbed and Hugues touched the tiny face. And then a nurse gently took her away. And as Natalie lay crying, they brought both of the others and held them up for her to see. Their son was crying lustily with a fuzz of blond hair and looked like his mother, and their little girl had the face of an angel and curly dark hair. Both babies were just over three pounds. And the one that hadn’t made it had been half their size. But even having two was a victory, and the one they lost was a baby who had never been meant to be. The doctor tried to focus their attention on the ones that had lived. They were put in incubators, but the doctor said they could go home when they reached four pounds.

And by then Natalie had been all sewn up. They covered her with a warm blanket, and she had a violent case of the shakes, from the shock, the emotion, and the surgery. She was shaking like a leaf. And Hugues felt as though they had gone over Niagara Falls. He was happy and sad, excited and victorious and heartbroken over the baby they had lost, all at once, and so was Natalie. They kept Natalie in the operating room for an hour and then wheeled her into a room. And the baby that had died had been taken away. The other two were in the neonatal ICU because they had been premature, but both were doing well.

When they got to Natalie’s room, Hugues took her in his arms and told her how proud of her he was, how brave she had been, and how beautiful their babies were, and like the doctor, he tried to remind her how lucky they were to have the two they did. Natalie couldn’t forget the face of the tiny baby girl they’d lost as Hugues spoke to her quietly.

And as soon as she calmed down a little, they called Heloise and told her the news, that she had a brother and a sister, and then she waited, and her father told her that they had lost a little girl. It saddened her too, but she was relieved to hear that Natalie and the other two were okay, especially with the risks involved. She would be coming back to the hotel in four days, and the twins in a few weeks.

“How is Natalie taking it?” she asked her father soberly. Natalie was still shaking too hard to talk.

“She’s fine, and she was very brave. We’re both sad, but we’re very grateful to have the two … and you,” he added with a smile.

“Can I see her?” Heloise asked him, but Natalie was in no shape for visitors yet, especially given what had happened.

“Maybe a little later. I think they want her to sleep for a while.” She was totally overwrought, and completely worn out, and she couldn’t stop crying. One moment they were tears of joy, and the next they were tears of grief. And he felt as though he had been on a roller coaster too.

“Are you okay, Papa?” Heloise worried about him too, especially since his heart attack. This was hard on him as well.

“I’m fine.” But he was worried about his wife. She had been through so much.

“I’ll tell everyone at the hotel.” Jennifer put up pink and blue balloons, and Heloise discreetly told them that they had lost one of the triplets, but the other two were fine, a boy and a girl, and Natalie was doing well.

She worked all day with the concierges, and then she and Brad went to see them that night. They saw the two babies in their incubators, and Heloise said they were gorgeous. And her father told her quietly in the hallway that as soon as Natalie left the hospital, there would be a burial service for the third baby. It made Heloise infinitely sad for them and put a damper on the moment, especially since they couldn’t bring the other two home yet, and she wished they didn’t have to go through it, but as her father said, it was part of life.

Natalie looked so exhausted and was in pain from the cesarean, so they didn’t stay long, and afterward Heloise and Brad went back to the hotel and talked about it. It sounded like she had gone through so much, and her father had too.

“It seems so complicated,” Brad said sadly. He never wanted Heloise to go through anything like it. And they talked about the future now, even though they were both young. It was one of those relationships that happened early and seemed to stay on a straight path. They knew they wanted to be together for a long, long time. And Brad pointed out that his aunt had waited a long time to have babies, and he agreed with Heloise that they were lucky to have the two that had survived. She could have had them earlier in the pregnancy and lost them all. It put it back into perspective, but Brad held her close that night, grateful that they had found each other nine months before. All he wanted was to protect her and take care of her, and he hoped they survived whatever bumps life provided them in the years to come.

Hugues wanted that for his wife as well. He was staying at the hospital with her, and taking care of her through the night, which made Heloise grateful too, that he was well enough to do that. They’d both been through a lot in the past two months, between the heart attack and the babies.

It was a hectic week while Natalie was in the hospital. Everyone wanted to see her and the babies, but she wasn’t up to it yet. And she was still mourning the baby girl that died. And it was a tragic day when they buried the baby girl after Natalie got home. Only she, Hugues, Heloise, and Brad attended the small service, and it tore Heloise’s heart out to see a casket so small. It was white with pink flowers on it, and Natalie sobbed uncontrollably, and then at Hugues’s insistence they stopped at the hospital to see the others, to remind them of what they had. They had named them Stephanie and Julien. And Julien made funny faces at them as they looked at him in the incubator. Stephanie just lay there and looked peaceful and dozed off to sleep as they watched her. They looked like little angels. Brad and Heloise were mesmerized by them, they were so small, and Heloise had forgotten all about feeling displaced. They were part of her family now and had won her heart when they were born. She’d been buying little presents for them all week, and Brad teased her about it.

All four of them went home to the hotel and they had dinner together in Hugues and Natalie’s apartment. It had been another exhausting day, with the burial and all the emotions of that. Natalie went to bed before they finished dinner.

Once Natalie was home from the hospital and settled in, Hugues went back to work in his office for the first time in over a month, and it felt wonderful to him. And they went to the hospital together when Natalie went to feed the twins. Her milk had come in, and she was nursing, and leaving breast milk at the hospital for them. And she was worried about Hugues working too hard. She still wished he’d sell the hotel before it killed him. They were talking about it one night as they lay in bed together.

Natalie shook her head as she looked at him lying next to her. He seemed more content now that he’d gone back to work. “I’m not going to convince you to sell this place, am I?” She felt closer to him than she ever had, after all they’d just been through, and he felt the same way about her.

“Never.” He answered her question with a smile. “I almost made that mistake once. I won’t do it again. One day Heloise will run it, and maybe even Julien and Stephanie. And then you and I will travel the world and have fun.” He made it sound like it was just around the corner, but Natalie knew now that it was years away. She couldn’t even imagine him turning over the reins of the Vendome. Sharing it with Heloise perhaps, but he wasn’t ready to retire, and she wondered if he ever would be. The hotel he had devoted his life to for twenty years was still his passion, and now so was she.

“All right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “I concede. You’re all crazy. Heloise works as hard as you do. She was doing double shifts the whole time you were sick.” And she had done it again that week. “Just don’t kill yourself doing it,” she warned him. “I need you for a long, long time, Hugues Martin.”

“I need you too,” he said as he pulled her close to him to kiss her. “You’re the woman I love, and the mother of my children. And one day, I promise you, we’ll get out of here, when Heloise is ready to take it on.” It was a promise she didn’t intend to hold him to, but she had finally understood that he was never going to sell and probably shouldn’t. The Hotel Vendome was his life.

Chapter 24

IN MAY THEY all attended Brad’s law school graduation. His parents and siblings came up for it, and everyone was excited for him, Heloise most of all. She had watched him study every night and knew how hard he had worked. She was proud of him, and really thrilled. His parents had given him a trip to Europe, and he was taking Heloise with him in August. They were going to Spain and Greece and winding up in Paris. They could hardly wait. He was going to take the bar in July and was already preparing for it.

He had been interviewing for jobs at law firms for three months and finally realized that both antitrust and tax law bored him. He had gone through a brief phase of thinking that he wanted to do criminal defense work, but he didn’t want to work in the public defender’s office. What he really wanted to do was labor law. He found it fascinating and talked to Hugues about it, who arranged an interview with the law firm that handled all their labor disputes at the hotel. And the week before graduation they had offered him a job. He was starting at the end of August, when he and Heloise got back from Paris, and he was really excited about it. He knew it was the right line of work for him, and he teased Heloise that maybe one day he would be the labor lawyer for the hotel. She hoped he would be.

He was giving up his apartment near Columbia before they left for Europe, and Hugues had given his blessing for him to move into the hotel with Heloise. He stayed there every night anyway, and her schedule was so intense that they saw more of each other that way. And they’d been dating for a year. They complemented each other well. And Brad’s parents were pleased too. They were too young to decide on their future, but they seemed to be heading that way. They were just starting out on their careers, had much to learn and a long way to go. She was about to turn twenty-two by then, and he had just turned twenty-six. Still babies, as their parents said.

Hugues hosted a beautiful graduation dinner for him that night at the restaurant at the hotel, for both families and a few of Brad’s friends. It was a beautiful celebration. Heloise had worked on the menu with the chef and picked all the wines, and everyone loved the selections she’d made.

The twins were home by then, and thriving. Natalie had taken a three-month maternity leave to be with them full time. And she was loving every minute of it, and nursing them both. They still remembered and often thought of the baby they had lost, but they were enjoying the ones they had. And she was trying to figure out how to work part time and take fewer projects when she went back to work.

Natalie took the babies out in a double stroller every day, while Hugues went for his walk in the park. He was giving Heloise more and more responsibility, and he was taking Natalie and the twins away for their anniversary in July. They had rented a house in Southampton for the week. He had just given Heloise the title of Assistant Manager. She had completed her internship for him, in addition to the one she had done for the Ecole Hoteliere, and she had earned her stripes. At twenty-two, she was a supremely competent young woman, and her father was very proud.