The emergency team at Memphis’s Baptist Memorial Hospital were alerted that someone important who had stopped breathing was coming in, so they were waiting outside. They pulled Elvis from the ambulance and ran with him into the emergency room with Charlie Hodge, Dr. Nick, and me at their heels.
Charlie and I were escorted to a private waiting room near the emergency room. Dr. Nick rushed with the hospital personnel into the ER. Soon after, Billy Smith, Al Strada, and David Stanley showed up. Sam Thompson stayed behind at Graceland with Vernon, Minnie Mae, and Lisa.
We waited in that room for twenty to thirty minutes, barely talking.
Finally, Dr. Nick entered, his face blank and as pale as his shock of white hair. It was over.
“He’s gone” Dr. Nick said. “He’s no longer here.”
Everyone burst into tears and held on to one another.
We didn’t discuss the cause of Elvis’s death.
No one mentioned it, and I doubt if anyone even thought of it.
For a few blank moments, we were at a loss. We had no contingency plans.
Then I put shock, grief, and confusion aside. To steady myself, I focused on my job: to do the funeral and do it right.
“Do you want to make the announcement?” Maurice Elliot, the hospital public relations man, asked me.
Dr. Nick intervened. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t make the announcement until I get to Graceland and talk to Vernon.”
He rushed out of the hospital, and the ambulance driver dropped him at the house. He didn’t want Vernon to learn of his son’s death over the radio.
