Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [320]
She and Karen had gone backstage, where he was his usual charming self. Then, quite suddenly, “The dressing room was empty except for Elvis, Karen, and myself, as the entourage had left rather strategically. He was very seductive and very heavily flirted with us. Karen was younger than me, and I felt a little bit responsible for her, and after about half an hour, I thought, ‘Wait a minute.’ I said to Elvis, ‘We have to go,’ and I took Karen’s hand and we left.
“We had a laugh about it, because I think that Elvis was rather looking forward to having a threesome with us, and I didn’t think that was a good idea, even though there was a bit of a spark there.”
Now, in 1973, Petula had been looking forward to another terrific show, but she saw a very different Elvis that night. “He obviously wasn’t the same man. He was fooling around onstage, and he was sloppy in his work, not singing everything all the way through.”
Again, she went backstage, but when Elvis came into the dressing room, Petula was chagrined to see “he was out of it, and there were people hanging around telling him what a fantastic show it was, and it wasn’t. I stayed about ten minutes, and it was a very, very sad ten minutes. The Elvis that we all knew just wasn’t there.”
Mary Ann Mobley and her husband, actor Gary Collins, also went to see him around this time. He took them back and showed them some of his new wardrobe, but as they talked, Mary Ann realized he was clinically depressed.
“He could see no change in his life. It was just going to Vegas, going back to the house, maybe renting out the movie theater, and that’s it. No new interests. That’s what keeps you going. No one said to him, ‘Look, we’re going to get out of this rut. We’re going to charter a plane and fly to Capri or Nice, and we’ll have plenty of security, and you’ll see new places.’ What good is it to make all that money and to have the following he had and not be excited to get up every day?”
In October, two days after the divorce decree was finalized in Santa Monica, Elvis had trouble breathing. He and Linda flew home to Memphis on a chartered jet, but on the plane, a worried Linda watched as his breathing grew even more labored, despite a constant administration of oxygen. Dr. Nick came out to the house and was shocked to find Elvis swollen almost beyond recognition. The physician left his office nurse, Tish Henley, more or less on permanent duty at Graceland, but when Elvis worsened in the next few days, the physician put him in Baptist Memorial Hospital, where he underwent extensive testing for all of his health concerns.
He was having occasional problems controlling his bladder and bowels, he said, conditions that would sometimes leave him incontinent. Dr. Nick asked every question in the world, and that’s when he learned that the “acupuncture” Elvis received in California had been administered with syringes filled with Demerol. Elvis remained in the hospital for two weeks to detox.
Linda stayed by his side, both because she loved him, and to keep him from charming the nurses into bringing him all the drugs he wanted.
Sheila Ryan was initially shocked by Elvis’s emotional regressions, but felt she had to stay. “I knew that I had been sent there for the downfall.” (Courtesy of Sheila Ryan Caan)
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Where Does Love Go? ”
One morning in 1974, Elvis woke from a deep Placidyl sleep and groggily struggled to focus on the face of the woman beside him. Linda was exhausted, having survived one of the most frightening nights of her life. It started out like any other. Elvis was eating some chicken soup for dinner, and Linda went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She took her time cleansing her face and changing into her nightclothes, and when she came out, she saw a terrifying scene: Elvis was facedown in the hot soup, suffocating in the bowl.
She yanked him out and tried to revive him, and when that failed, she frantically called Dr. Nick, who raced in and gave Elvis a shot of Ritalin.
Now, after sleep, it took him an unbearably