Blue Like Elvis (29 page)

As the door closed
behind him, we all broke out the tissues. Mrs. B wiped her eyes again, folding
and refolding her handkerchief. When she was able, she continued. “Girls,
tomorrow morning when you come in, we’ll meet briefly to discuss how to wind
down our work here, how to inform your floor staff, that sort of thing. In the
meantime, I would like to invite you all to be my guests a week from Thursday,
at
Top of the 100,
the revolving restaurant atop the Union Planters
building downtown for a final dinner together and a chance to celebrate the
times we’ve shared.”

I couldn’t help
but think . . . our office picnic had become the last supper.

C
hapter 41

As we left the
conference room, I think we all felt numb. I know I did. You’d think we’d be
moaning and groaning about the situation, or at the very least, ranting to some
degree about what the heck we’d all do. Instead, an unusual eerie silence surrounded
us. Mrs. Baker stayed out of the office. I can only assume she was avoiding us—not
because she didn’t care, but because she hated what she just told us, hated the
predicament, and maybe even hated the thought of saying goodbye in the very
near future. I couldn’t blame her for disappearing for a while. It was all so
surreal.

I looked at my
watch—2:30. I tried to reach Tucker, still on his shift, but I was told he was with
a patient in the ER, so I decided to go back up to Jimmy’s room. I just needed
someone to talk to. I needed my daddy.

Dad was working a
crossword puzzle and my brother was still lights out. Dad came back out in the
hall with me and we found a couple of chairs. I unloaded about my crazy day. He
was such an amazing father, always knowing when I just needed to talk things
out.

When I finished,
he pulled me into a side hug and said, “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry, though I have
no doubt in my mind that you can do anything you set your mind on. But my
goodness, when it rains it pours, doesn’t it? What a week it’s been. Your
brother’s accident, you got engaged, your friend’s about to undergo a heart
transplant—and now this.”

“I know. Weird,
isn’t it? The highs and lows are about to give me whiplash. Makes you wonder,
what’s next?”

What’s next . . .

No sooner had
those words left my mouth, than I heard myself paged. When I called the
operator, she connected me to Sandra in the hostess office.

“Shelby! OH MY
GOSH, Shelby, have you heard?” She sounded out of breath and more than a little
hyper.

“No, what’s going
on?”

“Elvis! It’s all
over the news. They’re saying he’s dead!”

“WHAT?” I didn’t
mean to shout, and immediately looked around, hoping it wasn’t as loud as I
thought. Clearly it was. Dad rushed over to my side, his expression asking what
was wrong. “
Who’s
saying he’s dead?” I asked more quietly.

“Supposedly they’re
bringing him here to Baptist by ambulance right now. Some reports on the radio
are saying he’s dead. Others say they’re still trying to resuscitate him. I can’t
believe it! I just can’t believe it! Oh Shelby, meet me in the Union lobby so
we can see what’s going on. Hurry!”

I told Dad what
Sandra had said, gave him a hug, then ran down the hall and impatiently pressed
the down button by the elevators. It was taking forever so I opted for the
stairs, taking them as fast as I could in my wedged heels.

When I pushed open
the door on One, it hit me hard.

I could
physically
feel it. Something was in the air . . .

Ask anyone who was
there that day and they’ll tell you. The air literally crackled with
electricity. As if a nearby transformer had blown and all of us could feel the hairs
lift off our arms, our necks. The Union Avenue lobby quickly filled as
employees rushed to see for themselves. Their questions, hushed but urgent.

Is it true?
Please tell me it’s not true!

Surely it’s
just a rumor?

Elvis Presley . . .
our Elvis . . . dead?!

Word had spread
like a Tennessee wildfire throughout the hospital . . . an
ambulance carrying the King of Rock ‘n Roll was racing through the streets of
Memphis from Graceland to “his” hospital, flanked by police cars and motorcycle
cops.

Elvis? Dead?
How can that be?

I spotted Sandra
immediately and rushed to her side. She grabbed my hand in a death-lock grip with
both of hers. We held our ground there by that expansive wall of windows
overlooking the Emergency Room bay. I couldn’t breathe, and except for an
occasional whisper or whimper, no one else seemed to be breathing either.
Doctors, nurses, bookkeepers, administrators, gift shop clerks, cafeteria
workers, visitors, even a patient or two—some in wheelchairs pushed by family
members—and most of my own coworkers . . . we all stood there. Waiting,
hoping, praying.

Shrouded in silent
grief, we waited for him to arrive, fearing the worst.

Don’t ask me why,
but just then I looked up at the clock on the wall—2:56. Then flashing lights
suddenly rounded the corner as a long line of emergency vehicles made the final
stretch of the ER entry. As the ambulance rolled into sight, I felt a tear slip
down my cheek, then another. I felt Sandra’s arm slip around my waist, pulling
me closer. I felt someone else’s arm drape over my shoulder. In moments, the
girls were all around us, drawing even closer as the crowd behind us pushed for
a better view. I could hear Sandra’s whispered prayers in her native tongue. And
then I caught a waft of Mrs. Baker’s familiar cologne and heard her utter, “Oh,
dear Lord . . .”

I knew it wasn’t
possible, but at that precise moment, the whole scene seemed to slip into slow
motion. The incessant flash of cameras created a surreal landscape of strange
strobe-like movements as people rushed across the lawn below us toward the ER.
The barrage of flashing red lights bounced off glass-covered medical buildings
as the wailing sirens echoed in that valley of concrete and glass.

And then the
sirens went silent . . . all of them, leaving an eerie,
foreboding hush in their wake.

Oh God, please
don’t let Elvis die . . .

We
waited and waited. The halls and lobbies of BMH filled to near-capacity. Rumors
ran wild. I thought I would lose my mind. After an hour with no validation as
to what was going on in that ER, I looked up and saw Tucker threading his way
through the crowd toward me. When our eyes met, he waved me toward him. I
grabbed Sandra’s hand and we slipped through the pack of onlookers.

As we neared him, he held out his arms, beckoning me to that
safe place I’d come to cherish most. I quickly melted into his embrace,
desperately needing some sort of stability in the madness of this moment.

“Tucker, what have you heard?”

“I was there when they brought him in.”

“You were
there
?” Sandra shrieked, her hands grasping
his arm.

“Shhh, c’mon. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.” He pulled us
to a corner as far away as we could get from everyone else. He looked around to
make sure we were out of earshot.

“Is it true?” I asked, clutching onto him.

“Is he dead?” Sandra whimpered.

He dropped his head, then looked back up. “I’m afraid so.”

Sandra let out an unexpected cry, and Tucker quickly brought
her under his other arm. “Shhh, we need to keep this under wraps until an
official announcement is released. Dr. Nichopoulos is on his way to Graceland
to tell Elvis’s dad. After that takes place, they’ll go public.”

“What happened?” I asked as quietly as I could.

“Well, that remains to be seen. Apparently he was discovered
in his bathroom unconscious. Or so they said. From what we could tell, he’d
been gone for quite a while by the time they got him to the emergency room.
Livor mortis had clearly set in—”

“Rigor mortis?” Sandra asked.

“No,
livor
mortis. It’s a purple skin coloration. If
it doesn’t blanch out when you press your finger against it—meaning, it remains
purple—that’s a sign that the patient has been dead for two or more hours. Plus,
when you factor in that the body was also stiff—indicating an onset of rigor
mortis, which you’re obviously familiar with—he was obviously dead long before
he arrived here.”

“How horrible,” I said.

“In fact, one of the nurses on the Harvey team verbalized
what we all were thinking when she asked why in the world we were working on a
corpse. He was visibly blue and unresponsive. Someone told her, ‘Because it’s
Elvis.’ Like most of us, she hadn’t recognized him. Honestly, I had no idea it
was him. He was extremely bloated and like I said, very, very blue.”

Can this really be happening? This kind-hearted man I met
only a few weeks ago—now dead? First Dr. Love, now Elvis? No matter what Tucker
said, I just couldn’t want to believe it.

We all lingered at the hospital, hoping against hope there
had been some bizarre mistake. People reminisced, others couldn’t stop crying,
but none of us wanted to believe it. We kept hearing reports that the entire
section of town near Graceland had come to a standstill because of all the
traffic. Masses of people were gathering there as they had here, all of them
hoping it was just a sick, elaborate hoax.

I had lots of questions too. I peppered Tucker with them over
and over until he asked me to stop. His long shift was finally over and he just
wanted to go home and get some sleep. Sandra and Trevor left, as did the rest
of the girls in my office. But I didn’t want to go home yet. I wanted to spend
some time with my family up in Jimmy’s room.

Mom and Dad were both there, Mom looking much more rested,
but terribly sad. She’d always loved Elvis, having met him several times at Dad’s
dealership. She had every one of his albums and played them constantly,
especially when we were kids. It finally dawned on me—maybe that’s why I wasn’t
a big Elvis fan growing up. I’d heard one too many tunes by the King when I was
younger.

But that all changed that day in the prayer room. I’d met the
man, not the image. And he couldn’t have been kinder. His heartfelt despair
over Dr. Love’s imminent passing had drawn out that beautiful, unforgettable hymn,
quietly sung in the softly lit prayer room.

They’d called his time of death at 3:30. According to the
Shelby County medical examiner, the cause of death was listed as heart
failure—which he announced
before
the autopsy. Others speculated that
Elvis had died from a drug overdose. Those reports broke my heart. We all knew
he’d had problems for years, which explained so many of those weeks he’d stay
with us at Baptist, trying to overcome those afflictions. But it seemed grotesquely
wrong for reporters to jump to conclusions when no autopsy had yet been performed.

Maybe we were just naїve, but we were surprised at the
vastness of the television coverage. When local news finally gave way to the
networks, we found ourselves glued to the set in Jimmy’s room, watching Chet
Huntley and David Brinkley detail the news coming out of Memphis. As Mom helped
Jimmy try to eat a few bites of red Jell-O and applesauce, we listened to the
animated conversation of a young reporter named Geraldo Rivera. He seemed
overly agitated about the whole situation, making all sorts of wild
speculations about what went on in that bathroom at Graceland, and even more
so, in Trauma Room 2 in Baptist’s ER. So much misinformation seemed to be
flying all over Memphis, and across the world, for that matter. After a while,
we grew weary of it all and turned off the set. I said my goodbyes, promising
to see them again in the morning.

In the days that followed, the entire spectacle surrounding
the death of Elvis Presley warped out of control. Everyone was stunned to hear
that his body was already lying in state at Graceland the next day.
The next
day
. How could they have possibly pulled that together so fast? Thousands
lined Elvis Presley Boulevard hoping to pay their respects. It was estimated
that more than 80,000 people filed by that open casket.

I found it all very distasteful. Why an open coffin for
complete strangers to stare and gawk over? It seemed like more of a staged
event for curiosity seekers than an opportunity for genuine fans to pay tribute
to a beloved entertainer. The most devoted of fans took it the hardest, many
collapsing and fainting after hysterical outbursts. I couldn’t imagine being
over there in all that chaos, especially in the sweltering 94-degree heat. Yet
one of the nurses on my floor later told me she’d gone with her husband,
waiting in line more than nine hours for one last look at her beloved Elvis.