Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [157]
“No,” Gladys said. “Just go on to the movie now, and come back up here tomorrow. If I need anything, Daddy will call you.”
He kissed her, and then he left and picked up Frances, Gloria, and Heidi to go to the Crosstown Theatre.
“I don’t think Elvis had any idea she would die,” Billy says. “He really thought she’d get better.”
But Gladys knew the truth. “Son,” she said, “when you come back tomorrow, make sure the other patients have these flowers.”
When Elvis got home, he asked Lamar to drop off the girls and told him Gladys had asked about him two or three times. But Lamar had been running back and forth, taking Minnie Mae up to the hospital and talking to the doctor. “They drained something like a gallon and a half of fluid off of Gladys two days before she died. But Elvis said, ‘Come with me in the morning and we’ll go see her, ’cause she’s going to be all right.’ I said to Billy, ‘She’s not going to make it through the night.’ ”
Billy went up to Elvis’s room, and they watched TV a little while before drifting off. Suddenly Elvis raised himself on the bed. “Something’s wrong,” he said. Billy asked what he meant. “I don’t know. I got an eerie feeling.” Then he laid back down.
It was a little after 3 A.M. on August 14, and Vernon, sleeping in a chair at the hospital, woke up to the sound of Gladys struggling for breath. Her face was a yellow mask of fear. Gladys Love Presley, age forty-six, was in full cardiac arrest and would die within minutes.
Shortly after, the phone rang downstairs at Graceland. Lamar was still out, and at first, Elvis just let it ring.
“It’s late, Billy,” he finally said. “Maybe you should go down and get it.”
When Billy answered, “I heard Vernon say, ‘Oh, God—’ He was just sobbing. He said, ‘Tell Elvis . . .’ Then he really broke up. I don’t know if the nurse took the phone from him, or if he handed it to her, but she got on, and I could hear him crying in the background.”
“Tell Elvis he needs to get up here quick as he can,” she said. “His mother has taken a turn for the worse.”
Billy ran upstairs. “That was the nurse. She said to tell you that you might ought to get up there, that your mom is starting to slip.”
“He said, ‘Oh, my God! No, Mama, no!’ I think he knew, but he didn’t want to believe it.” Elvis quickly pulled on his white shoes, a pair of white pants, and a white ruffled shirt. “We ran downstairs, and we jumped into the Lincoln Mark II, and we tore out of there like all hell had broke loose. The whole time we were driving, he said, ‘Oh, God, I’m scared! I’m afraid I’ve lost my mama!’ ”
When they got to the hospital, Elvis, nearly hysterical, slowed the Lincoln and jumped out, leaving the car in drive and letting it run over the breaker. Billy shoved the gearshift in park, and then he took off, too, leaving the car running, the lights blazing, both doors open. Elvis was way ahead of him now, running, running, running to Gladys.
Upstairs, as Elvis turned the corner, Vernon was just coming out of Gladys’s room. His face hung in folds of grief. Vernon reached out his arms, and Elvis rushed toward him. “God, son, she’s gone!” he cried.
“All the color just drained out of Elvis’s face,” Billy remembers. “He was white as a sheet. He started to sob this kind of unearthly sound. It just went through me.”
Father and son, so unable to show affection before, held each other and cried unashamedly in the hallway. Then Elvis broke away. “I want to see her,” he said.
“No, no, son,” Vernon pleaded. “Don’t go in there.”
But Elvis wouldn’t be stopped. “No, I’ve got to see my mama!”
With Billy by his side, Elvis entered the room where Gladys lay, so very still in a pink nightgown. An oxygen tent was pulled back from her face. She had a restful look about her.
Elvis leaned over and lifted her head, and pressed his cheek to hers. He cried and stroked her head, and then patted her on the stomach the way he had when he was a child, the two of them alone, with nothing but each other, in Tupelo.
“Oh, God, Satnin’,” he said. “Not when I can give you everything