Hotel Vendome

Heloise visited them as often as possible, but she had taken on extra work while he was gone. She came up to ask his advice and called him frequently on his cell phone, and he was happy to feel connected to the activities and decisions of the hotel. Natalie didn’t like it and was on a vendetta against the hotel now. She thought his work was too stressful, it had almost killed him, and now she wanted him to sell the Vendome. She wanted him to call the Dutch consortium and accept their offer. It was all she talked about. And when he was in the shower, she called Heloise and told her sternly not to call him so often. It made Heloise worry about him more.

“It’s out of the question,” he said firmly to Natalie about selling. “I can’t do that to Heloise. She loves this place too much.”

“She loves you more,” Natalie insisted. “If we lose you, it will destroy us all. You have to live for her and our babies, and this place will kill you if you don’t slow down.” He didn’t know how to slow down so she wanted him to sell. He was constantly on the phone to Bruce, Jennifer, and the front desk to find out what was going on.

“I’m taking a month off,” he reminded Natalie, hoping to mollify her, but Natalie’s only mantra now was for him to sell the hotel. She didn’t say anything to Heloise about it, but she said it to Hugues constantly, and he told her he wouldn’t, in no uncertain terms. She was stressing him more than the hotel. It was the only argument they had. The rest of the time they enjoyed being together. She loved having him home with her.

He went out for a walk around the reservoir every day, and came back with little treats for her. Four weeks after his heart attack, he looked better than ever, and by then Natalie looked like a woman lying under a mountain. He smiled every time he looked at her. She could hardly move.

The doctor came to visit her on a regular basis, and an OB nurse came to check her every day. It was April by then, and she was having contractions. The obstetrician thought it would be soon, but she was seven months pregnant, and the babies were growing nicely. They could survive if they were born now.

They were watching an old I Love Lucy rerun and eating popcorn one night, when Natalie suddenly made an odd expression and then looked at Hugues, as though she didn’t understand what was happening. She was suddenly lying in a pool of water, which rapidly spread to his side of the bed. He was afraid that she was bleeding, but when he looked at the sheets, he saw it was just water, and then they both realized what had just happened.

“Oh my God, my water just broke,” she said to him with a look of panic. But at seven months the triplets were in much less danger, even though they were small, and all three would almost certainly survive. Hugues called the doctor, and she said to bring Natalie in as quickly as possible. She had no idea how rapidly labor would happen, and she didn’t want to have the babies born at the hotel or in a taxi. Hugues called security and asked them to bring up a wheelchair. They had several of them in the hotel, one of which he’d used to come home from the hospital himself a month before. He was fully recovered, and after his long daily walks, he felt better than ever, and he had been planning to go back to work that week.

Bruce brought the wheelchair up to them in a few minutes, and Hugues helped Natalie get dressed. It was two o’clock in the morning. And he was wondering if their babies would be born that night. It was very exciting. And if so, they knew the babies would have to stay at the hospital for a while, in incubators, depending on how big they were. But in her belly they looked enormous to them.

Once she was dressed, Hugues helped her from the bed to the wheelchair, and she smiled up at him once she sat down.

“It looks like this is showtime,” she said softly. They had waited so long for this. The hormone treatments the previous summer, the IVF, and now seven months of being pregnant, and she had been in bed for nearly four months. She felt ready to face what was coming. She just hoped that their babies were too.

Hugues and Bruce took Natalie down the elevator in the wheelchair. If it had been earlier, he would have called Heloise, but he didn’t want to disturb her and assumed that she was sleeping.

None of the drivers were around at that hour to drive them to the hospital. And it was simpler to take a taxi. The doorman hailed one for them, and Natalie held Hugues’s hand in the cab. It felt so good to be out in the warm spring air and see the city again. She felt like she had been in prison for months.