Our Private Eden: A Memphis Miracle

There was less foot traffic than one would expect of a mid-sized, once-bustling hub of commerce and finance - the golden buckle of the cotton belt - at 6 in the evening. What foot traffic we could see did little to calm her. I knew the city wasn't what it used to be, but I knew that the ribs would be worth it.

"Where the hell are you taking me," she asked as we walked into a grimy alleyway off Union Avenue directly across from where the Peabody's grand entrance would be were it not surrounded by construction fencing. Holly, a confident country girl who didn't spook easily, held tight to my right arm with both of her hands. She relaxed a bit when, a few steps into the alley, she smelled the charcoal smoke of ribs cooking and saw the bright "Rendezvous" sign and its arrow pointing to stairway descending into the basement.

When we entered, she understood my affinity for it, partly because she could read by my manner my connection to this place. Workers and bar staff I could remember from my first trips decades earlier greeted Holly and me as if we were long-lost friends. I'm sure they had no idea who I was or that I'd ever been there before, but you couldn't tell it. Either way, it felt welcoming, genuinely downhome, forgiving - the crystallization of the Memphis zeitgeist. Even Pop-Pop, a man of the cloth loath to be connected with either gluttony or excessive drink, would pound down a rack of ribs with a mug of Miller High Life at the 'Vous. There's also the fact that the ribs at the Rendezvous are the best I've ever had, and that's quite a claim coming from a boy raised in Kansas City.

Holly and I were seated at a booth near the corner of the rectangular bar and the stool where Pop-Pop would sit, as he had the last time I'd been in here with him. On the bar in front of the stool was a small brass plaque the size of an index card screwed into the wood:

The Reverend Porter Moore.

Friend of The Rendezvous and

friend of Charlie Vergos

before there was a Rendezvous.

This wasn't one of those places where you had to scan a lengthy menu to decide what to order: pork ribs were the 'Vous. The only question was how much: full rack or half rack.

"How hungry are you, baby. We burned off a lot of calories this afternoon," I said with a smirk. "Don't know about you, but I could handle a whole rack if not a whole hog. Why don't we both get a full slab and I can finish any you don't eat."

So it was: two full slabs with coleslaw and baked beans as sides plus a pitcher of beer and two mugs.

I was right about Holly and myself. We both finished a full slab of ribs, though I helped Holly with one or two she just couldn't handle. And together, we put away two pitchers of beer over more than three hours of dining and small talk.

On the drive back to the Rivermont, I had the Mustang's top down, enjoying the textbook start-of-autumn evening as we cruised down Riverside Drive when Holly bent slightly forward and put her hand on her tummy.

"May regret eating that much barbecue," she said.

"Do I need to pull over? You need to throw up?"

"Nah. More like cramping, not like stomach nausea. Sort of like that night after our naked picnic," she said. "It'll pass."

We got back to room 701, but it didn't pass so quickly. She went into the bathroom, thinking a moment on the toilet might clear things up, but that didn't happen. Eventually, the cramping dissipated enough for her to get drowsy. I stroked her hair and traced my finger along her shoulders and arms until she fell into a deep sleep. I hit the button on my bedside table and the curtain began lowering, then changed my mind and hit it again, raising it. What better vista to drift off to?

●●●

The plan had been to wake early on Friday, the 16th, check out of the Rivermont, hit I-55 and make Jackson by lunch. We hadn't intended to get up as early as we did. I awoke to the sound of Holly in the bathroom heaving violently into the commode.

I knelt on one knee beside her and pulled her hair back to avoid the splashback from the remnants of last night's ribs that were already in the toilet bowl.

"I'm so sorry, baby. Guess you were right about too much ribs," I said. She heaved again, another gush into the toilet. She gagged a couple more times and spit out the bitterness. I grabbed a couple of facial tissues nearby, dabbed her face clean, tossed them in the toilet and flushed it.

"Ohhh. This sucks, Corey. Don't think I've ever puked this hard. I would say it's food poisoning, but we at the exact same thing," she said, shaking her head. "A stomach bug maybe?"

I felt her brow. No sign of fever, though that's not always a symptom of a tummy bug.

"You know, you threw up yesterday, too, just before we hit the road. And you had those lower bowel cramps last night on the way back from the Rendezvous," I said. "I'm not a doctor, but I've heard of these kinds of symptoms occurring with people who have or are developing stomach ulcers. I think we should run you by a doctor before we head out this morning just to be safe."

"I don't know any doctors in Memphis. And it would probably take a week to get an appointment," she said.

"Good point. Wait. Let me try something."

I found our room portfolio with the number for the special concierge service on it and dialed it. A chipper feminine voice answered, "Good morning, Mr. Vaught, hope you've had a good evening. What can we do for you?"

I told her that Holly needs to see a doctor for a stomach issue pretty quickly and asked if the hotel had any recommendations.

"Oh dear, let me get on that and someone will call you right back. Stay close to the phone please," she said and hung up.

In the bathroom, I heard Holly retch again, but seemingly producing less from an empty stomach. It sounded more painful. I began walking toward her just as the phone lit up.

"Mr. Vaught, this is Belinda, concierge services manager here at the Riverfront. What sort of trouble is Mrs. Vaught having?"

"She woke up vomiting and has been for a while. It seems she's thrown up all the contents of her stomach and now she's sort of retching up bile."

"I see. I have an attendant on the way up to your room with a wheelchair and we will have a limousine waiting out front to take her and you to get seen about," Belinda said.

"A limousine?" I said.

"It's part of our fleet. And have agreements with local clinics and hospitals that look after our premier guests in cases like this. Roger will be outside your door shortly."

"OK. Thank you," I said.

I went into the bathroom as Holly was flushing the toilet and told her that the hotel was sending an attendant up to take her to a limousine for a trip to a clinic or a hospital.

"Just throw on some shorts and a T-shirt. The attendant will be outside any minute," I said. By now, Holly was feeling so bad and so drained that she didn't bother arguing. Within a minute, she wore a sweatshirt without a bra and a pair of shorts. She sat on the sofa just as Roger tapped on the door.

"A wheelchair?" she asked as she saw Roger push it into the room. "I'm barfing, I don't have a broken leg."

"Sorry ma'am. It's hotel policy, something our lawyers and insurance folks make us do. Can I assist you getting into it?"

She would have none of it. I opened the room door as Roger rolled Holly out, down the hall and into the elevator. Wallet? Check. Car keys? Check. Room key? Check. Checkbook? Check. Good to go.

Roger wheeled Holly into an underground parking deck where a black Lincoln Continental with the Rivermont logo in gold on its side waited. I slid in beside Holly and, within 15 minutes, we were pulling into a large four-winged hospital about a mile east of the Rendezvous on Union Avenue.

"Place looks familiar," I said to the driver.

"I guess because it was all over the news last month ago. This is Baptist Hospital where they brought Elvis and pronounced him dead, this very emergency room we're pulling into right now," he said.

Holly's eyes widened, though the queasy look had not yet departed from her face.

We checked Holly in and she was taken to an exam room off the triage area where the sickest of the sick, the most badly injured are first seen.

"Mr. Vaught, if you'll follow me I will show you to the waiting area," said a sweet-faced orderly with a Tennessee twang and the name "KATHY" on engraved on a silvery tag pinned to her white coat.

I read a the local newspaper, The Commerical Appeal, pretty much cover-to-cover, lingering on the sports pages hyping the weekend's college football clashes, particularly an intersectional matchup in Jackson between Ole Miss and the prohibitively favored Notre Dame Fighting Irish. On the other side of the state in Knoxville, the Tennessee Volunteers were expected to manhandle another Catholic school from up North, Boston College. Not that I gave a shit about either game, but it occupied my mind and kept it from swirling about worst-case outcomes for my precious Holly. It had been nearly three hours now. Nothing.

Finally, at 10:45 in the morning, Kathy found me in the waiting room and told me Miss Raymer had asked if I could join her in the exam room. My mind reeled and I struggled to breathe. My spirits sank deeper when I saw Holly sitting in a hospital gown on the exam table, her face streaked with tears.

Holly got off the table, rushed toward me, buried her face against my chest, clenched me tightly and wept.

"Baby, what's wrong? I am here for you no matter what."

She tried to sound out words, but she couldn't. She just cried. So I just held her and kissed the top of her head, praying that whatever it was, it wouldn't take my Holly from me. She was still sobbing when the door opened and Dr. Finis Foster walked in.

"Ah, Mr. Vaught. I'm Dr. Finis Foster, and I examined Miss Raymer here. I gave her my diagnosis and, well, you can see it came as quite a shock to her and she asked for you," he said.

I was still holding Holly and she was still crying.

"I see this all the time, as you might expect in my line of medicine, but I don't get a reaction like this very often. I practice obstetrics and gynecology," Dr. Foster said.

I mouthed the words obstetrics and gynecology. Women's reproductive medicine.

"Mr. Vaught, this lady you love and who loves you is pregnant. My best estimate is one trimester in, right at three months give or take a week," he said matter-of-factly.

I was stunned. My mouth was dry and my tongue felt deadened.

"But... th-that's impossible. Her doctor told her years ago after an infection that..."

"I know. She told me, or tried to. But clearly that doctor was wrong because Miss Raymer is most definitely pregnant and quite healthy."

"She came in complaining of cramping and morning nausea. So the ER doctor who did the initial work-up noticed the symptoms, found no evidence of food poisoning or stomach flu, so he called me in for a consult while I was making morning rounds in the maternity ward upstairs," the doctor said.

"The symptoms she's having are pretty common in a lot of women, though not all. They'll pass in a few weeks. I gather that this has come as a shock to the two of you and that it sneaked up on her because her periods have never been regular. So it appears you've got some decisions ahead. She'll need to make a few lifestyle alterations - no alcohol during the pregnancy, no smoking, avoid strenuous physical labor and lifting anything heavy and, after the sixth month, no air travel," he said.

"Here's a prescription you can get filled at any pharmacy to help out with the morning sickness," he said, handing me a white piece of paper with indecipherable scrawl on it. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"I'm sure I do, or I will, but I...," my voice trailed off. "I guess I could do the math myself, but roughly when will the baby arrive?"

"Should be mid- to late March - a St. Patrick's baby?"

By now, Holly had stopped crying. She was just clinging to me. Then she spoke.

"Dr. Foster, the quack who told me when I was little that I could never have children has been out of practice and living in a nursing home where he doesn't know his own name anymore, not that I'd ever go back to him anyway. But the fact is there aren't a lot of OB-GYNs in my part of rural southern Missouri who can provide the kind of competent services I need in regard to my... condition," she said. "Can you offer me some referrals in that area?"

"I think I know what you're asking," he said joylessly. "Leave your phone number and mailing address with the attendant and I will have my office look into it and contact you."

"I wish you both the best," the doctor said, shaking our hands as he turned and walked out.

Holly and I stood there silently for a few moments.

"God, baby, I was so terrified when they called me back here and saw you crying. I was afraid I was going to lose you," I said.

"No, but this changes everything about my life," she said. "It's something impossible, something I went a lifetime not preparing for. I don't know how I can handle this, Corey. It shakes me to my very soul."

I hugged her and kissed her forehead.

"Tell you what, let's get you dressed and get out of here - this depressing exam room, this hospital with the ghost of Elvis lurking around spying on us. Let's go back to the hotel, maybe sit by the pool a while and have a chance to think and to talk," I said.

Rather than summon the limo from the Rivermont, I paid the bill, walked onto the sidewalk by Union Avenue and flagged down a cab. When it deposited us at the front door to the hotel, Belinda, the concierge rushed toward us with a concerned look on her face.

"I pray you got a good report?" she said. I nodded politely. "It's not nearly as bad as I feared it might be."

"Oh thank God," Belinda said. "I've anticipated that you may be delayed in checking out so I've extended the checkout time if you still want to leave depart today, but I've also arranged for you to keep the room for another night should you wish to stay and recuperate."

"God bless you, Belinda," Holly said, reaching out and hugging her, something that took the concierge by surprise. But Belinda eassuringly embraced Holly and patted her on the back like the comforting mother Holly grew up without.

"That's OK, Mrs. Vaught. We pride ourselves on serving our guests," she said.

It was the first sign that the profound shock and melancholy that had gripped Holly at Baptist Hospital was beginning to lift. We went to the room and napped a couple of hours, changed into our swim trunks and went downstairs to sit around the pool in the warming midafternoon sun.

"I don't pray often enough, Corey. I know abortion is legal now, but the thought of it is horrifying to me. I don't know that I have the capacity to have a child. I mean this late in life, this new into a relationship with its father," she said.

"I love you Corey, and I mean that. But we've only known each other..." she paused, marveling at her next words, "just three months! I must have conceived almost the night we met or at least that weekend."

"But in just three months, you can't know all there is to know about me for a lifetime. I can't know all I need to know about you over a lifetime. I have not met your parents, and I don't really know or care where my mom is. Who knows if we will last for another week, another month or another year?" she said, her lip beginning to quiver anew.

"Baby, let's go for a little stroll or something along the river. I always think clearer when I'm moving. Let's go put on some shorts and some walking shoes."

She agreed, and the stroll seemed to do us good. The demons seemed to whisper to her when she was sitting still and could dwell on today's shock.

The afternoon sun was taking on a golden hue as it lowered itself nearer and nearer the Arkansas horizon and reflected across the river. We reached Tom Lee Park and sat quietly on a patch of soft grass to watch the sun take its final bow of the day.

I broke the silence.

"I've been thinking about what you said earlier - you know, not knowing all there is to know about each other after just three months. And you're right. And after three years, I won't know all there is to know about you. We won't know all there is to know until we're at the end of our lifetimes because I learn something new and wonderful about you every day," I said.

"Holly, the question isn't one of knowing everything about you but whether I know enough, do I know the right things and essential things about you? Have I answered the questions I need to know to commit to you? I have no doubt that I have."

"As I said when I told you that I love you for the first time weeks ago, I know that you - your needs, your wellbeing, what makes you happy - are on my mind all the time. I know that you're everything I look for not just in a woman but in a person, in a best friend. I know that after I met you, I discovered the part of me that, through my whole life up to that point, I never knew was missing; and now that I've found you, I absolutely can't live without. That's why I had that panicked look on my face when I walked into that exam room today and saw you crying harder than I've ever seen you cry, harder than I ever want to see you have to cry again. I thought you had received some potentially terminal diagnosis, and I could not bear that."

She looked at me and smiled. She nodded her head.

"Does what Dr. Foster told us change our plans? Sure it does. But they're all changes I can live with and even love. And the first small change is this," I said. I reached into the pocket of my shorts and palmed a small box.

"You see, I had planned to do this at sunset along a secluded stretch of beach on the Gulf during the next week, but today's events convinced me that this is something best done now," I said, turning toward her on one knee. I held the box before her and lifted its top revealing a gold band with a diamond solitaire in its setting. Her trembling hands clasped her face as tears spilled almost instantly from her eyes. She held her breath.

"Holly Raymer, I love you, I want to live my whole life with you and have a family together with you. Will you marry me?"

"Oh dear God, Corey, yes!" she squealed.

I slid the ring on the third finger of her left hand. It fit perfectly, a fact I credit to either the ring-sizing skill or lucky guess of the jeweler I had visited in Kansas City a week earlier. She looked at the orange rays of the day's setting sun glint off the diamond and wrapped her arms tightly around me.

"Yes, Corey, yes. A thousand times yes - I will marry you," she said.

We held each other as the sun disappeared on this, our engagement day, the day we learned that miracles do happen and that she would be a mom after a having abandoned that hope as a girl. Together, we had conceived new life at the very dawn of our love for each other, and now we would bring it into the world.

We were still sitting there, in each other's arms, as the lights to the bridges spanning the Mississippi and the towers of the business world behind us came on and the stars filled the blackness above.

When we finally strolled back down to the Rivermont and ascended in the elevator to room 701, we called room service and ordered Monte Cristo sandwiches with French Onion soup and apple juice. We declined the offer for complimentary champagne, mindful of Dr. Foster's orders. After it arrived, we stripped naked, turned out the lights, put on towels on the sofa and dined looking northward out the wall-window at the spectacular view of Memphis.

Then we put the plates aside and Holly climbed on top of me, straddling me where I sat.