Chapter 31
The sound check starts on time, and Mia runs through it at half intensity at Erin's request. She holds back her full vocal range and doesn't move the way she would in a regular rehearsal.
She takes it easy, just making sure she knows where everything is and mapping out the space she can move through.
She also asks them to adjust the direction of the fans and points out every spot where she wants water bottles.
Erin watches from the wings, sitting on a large wooden crate, earplugs in so the music blasting from the speaker right beside her doesn't blow out her eardrums. Toward the end of the rehearsal, the singer does ask to run two songs as if they were live.
Her voice explodes through the mic and the doctor's skin prickles all at once, her heart kicking into a run.
She can't help it — when Mia switches on, she's like a hurricane that flattens everything around her.
The singer moves back and forth through the first song and dances the second alongside the dancers, turning in a flawless performance that leaves everyone watching with their mouths open.
When it's over, Mia turns toward her from the stage and smiles as she walks to the edge.
As if no words are needed, Erin hops off the crate and walks to meet her, arriving just as Mia reaches the edge and leans forward to press her hands onto Erin's shoulders and jump down.
And after that jump comes another: the one where the singer wraps her legs around Erin's waist, a position they both love.
"I love that you watch me up there," she whispers, still breathless from the effort.
Erin brushes the damp strands off her forehead and kisses her.
"I like to think you're singing just for me. How are you feeling?"
The doctor presses her fingers to Mia's neck to feel her racing pulse.
"Hot, but fine."
Mia sets her feet on the ground and lets herself be guided to the medical room so Erin can take her blood pressure again.
"How am I doing, Dr. Dooley?" she teases, all mock-formal, as Erin pulls the velcro off her arm.
"I'd rather you were closer to the middle range, but you're still within normal."
"So I'm perfect. Lose the face, Doctor," she says, grinning at her own joke.
Erin bumps her shoulder.
"Sorry, babe, I can't help it — occupational hazard, I think. Why don't you go lie down on the couch in the dressing room and rest for twenty minutes?"
"You know I can't do that anymore, Erin — once we get close to showtime I get wound up and I can't stop. I'm going to talk to Noah about adjusting the lighting with the technicians; there's one that blinds me on the right side of the stage, and then I'll go to the dressing room and shower."
"Okay," the doctor agrees. "I'll go check on the water bottles. I'll get you a couple of sports drinks — I know you only want water when you're singing, but I'd really appreciate it if today you made an effort and took a few sips every now and then."
"I'll try." Mia kisses her and heads for the door, but turns back before opening it. "About talking — about us…"
Erin turns and sees the singer tracing the edges of the floor tiles with the tip of her foot.
"What I want is to be with you. I want this to work, Erin."
The doctor wants to tell her she does too, that the only thing she doesn't know yet is how to make it work, but she can't — because Mia has already slipped out of the room as if she's afraid the answer might hurt her.
Erin steps into the hallway and watches her run toward the stage area to find Noah, and she rolls her eyes because Mia is not supposed to push herself any more than strictly necessary before the concert, but she also understands that the singer is nervous, that she wants everything to go perfectly, and that's too much pressure for Erin to ask her to slow down.
The concert starts ten minutes behind schedule, on Jude's call — because, as always, she says it's better to make the audience wait so they're even more eager when she comes out.
Mia's performance that night is spectacular.
Her magnetism seems doubled, and the force she projects is so fierce that Erin is sure her blood pressure is higher now.
The singer takes every gap to drink and follows through — she takes a few sips of the sports drinks while the doctor, standing in the wings beside the stage, concludes that, honestly, she's easy to work with.
The lights cut out and the crowd erupts when a single spotlight falls on the singer, seated at the edge of the stage as she sings with no music.
Erin can honestly say she has the show memorized by now — the songs always follow the same order and the entrances are the same at every performance unless Mia decides to improvise something — but she still can't get used to it, and she still gets chills, like she's seeing it for the first time.
When the song ends, the darkness returns, and one of the crew members comes in nearly blind to reach the singer and help her back with a flashlight. Erin is certain she'd trip over everything given how little light there is — barely a flicker on the floor just in front of their feet.
He sets her down in front of the mic stand and jogs toward the wings, and as if Erin had brought bad luck by thinking about tripping, he catches something on the way down and goes face-first onto the floor.
The doctor isn't there for that — there's a medical team covering the event the same way she used to cover others alongside Barry — but she's closer and she can't stop herself.
"Are you okay?" she asks, grabbing his arm as he tries to get up.
When he puts his right foot on the ground he lets out a yelp of pain and his knees buckle. Erin holds him as best she can and helps him lie down on his back just as the medical team — two men — reaches them.
She steps back and lets them work, then returns to her spot, fixing her attention on Mia, who is deep into a choreography now, smiling when the crowd roars and singing like she's not tired at all.
But there's a moment when Erin thinks she misses a step.
It's only an instant, and she can't even confirm it because Mia is moving perfectly between two dancers.
Still, a pressure has settled in the doctor's chest that she can't shake, and she spends the last stretch of the concert with her heart pounding, watching the singer's every reaction.
When the show finally ends, Erin exhales with relief and doesn't take her eyes off Mia, who jumps off the stage because she's running on pure adrenaline, walks up to her, and presses a kiss to her mouth that nearly knocks her off balance.
"Look at all that energy, honey," she smiles, putting her hands on Mia's neck to kiss her again.
Mia's wide smile is contagious, and the doctor feels her mind go soft under the bluish gaze of the artist with the tattooed body.
"I really like you, Dooley," Mia breathes against her mouth.
She's said it more than once already, but she needs to keep saying it, because she loves the thing that happens on Erin's face when she hears it: at first it looks like surprise, like she didn't know, but then the left corner of her mouth starts to curve in a slow, unsteady way, and Mia finds it ridiculously sexy.
"You don't have to sweet-talk me — you already have me."
Erin takes her wrist out of habit to check her pulse, knowing she can't really read it right now because she's too revved up.
"Just in case," Mia teases.
The doctor hugs her because suddenly she needs the contact of her body.
"You were incredible, darling — better than any other night."
"You say that every time," she protests against her neck.
"Do I?"
Erin makes a surprised face when she pulls back, and Mia gives her a gentle shove.
"I'm going to get some water."
She walks off to grab one of the bottles at the edge of the stage, and Erin watches her until Nell stops beside her.
"I was thinking that when we get to Atlanta we could go out to dinner, the four of us — you two, Noah, and me. I know a place that does a grilled steak that'll make you cry. I went there with my husband and I'd love to go back, but not alone."
"Sure," Erin says, "mention it to Noah so he can work it out."
"Great…"
"Erin…"
The doctor turns at the sound of Mia's voice and the brush of the singer's hand on her arm, but all she has time for is watching Mia's eyes go unfocused before her knees give out.
Erin tries to catch her to break the fall, but it's all so sudden, and her position — standing to the side of Mia — is so bad, that she knows she won't be able to hold her up, and the only thing she can do is go down with her to cushion the impact with her own body.
The movement is so strange and sudden that not even Nell, who is only a few feet away, has time to do anything.
Erin gets one arm around Mia's back as best she can; with the other she wraps around her beneath her chest, and since she has no time to get into a better position to hold her, she simply lets herself fall with her, getting behind her so the singer lands on top.
The doctor manages to avoid a hard blow: she's been able to get one knee down without hurting herself too badly and brace her body before her back hits the floor, but what she hasn't been able to control is the momentum of the singer's head, which catches her full in the right cheekbone and makes her see stars.
Erin needs a few seconds to recover from the shock — just enough time for a nearby crew member and Nell to lift Mia off her and lay her carefully on the floor.
The doctor, fairly dazed but aware of what she needs to do, starts to push herself up when she feels hands under her arms pulling her upright to help her.
She knows it's Noah because she can hear him saying something, but she can't take it in right now.
"Take her to the medical room," she orders one of the singer's bodyguards when he moves in to carry her.
Erin gets to her feet and has to stop for a second to let the spinning settle. Her cheekbone throbs like someone is hitting it with a hammer every second, and it hurts so much that at first she can barely open her eye.
"Erin, are you okay?" Nell asks, but she's already running after the guy carrying Mia in his arms.
The man sets her carefully on the gurney and leaves the room, and just like the first time it happened, Erin clears everyone out except Noah and Nell, who stay off to one side in case she needs them.
The first thing the doctor does is slide her hand behind Mia's head, checking for any wound from the fall, but she finds nothing, and she's still making sure when Mia's eyes snap open.
"Hey — look at me, it's me," Erin says.
The singer's gaze is unfocused at first, like she's trying to figure out where she is; then she starts to blink, and Erin watches the moment terror begins to take hold because she's disoriented.
"Honey," the doctor whispers, cupping her face in her hands and tilting her head just slightly so she's looking only at her. "You fainted, but nothing happened — you're okay, and you're with me. Noah and Nell are here too."
The doctor snaps her fingers in front of Mia's eyes when she seems to drift, but she manages to pull her back, and she watches the tears start sliding down her face.
"It's okay," Erin continues, wiping them away with her hands. "Look at me, honey. Do you know who I am?"
Mia focuses on her, her eyes wide open as if she needs a few seconds to recognize her. Then she nods and sniffles, and when Erin smiles at her, the relief hits the singer all at once. She exhales hard and tries to sit up on instinct, but Erin stops her and leans over her.
"You can't get up yet," she says, reaching for her wrist at the same time.
"Did I fall on the stage?" she asks, still pretty confused.
"No, the concert was over — don't worry."
"What happened to your face?" she says, lifting a trembling hand.
Erin catches it in midair because she knows if she lets it touch her she'll see stars again.
"Nothing, just a stupid bump. How are you? Does anything hurt? Your head? Your body?"
"No," she answers, but her hand goes to her stomach at the same time.
"Does your stomach hurt?"
"My period," Mia murmurs, pressing her other hand to her face to wipe the tears still falling.
"You have your period?"
"It must be coming, because I'm cramping."
"Okay."
Over the next several minutes, Erin puts in an IV line to start a fluid drip, and she accepts — at Nell's insistence — that one of the doctors covering the event put a butterfly stitch on the small cut the blow has opened on her cheek.
"Done," the man announces. "Do you need anything else?" he asks, looking at the singer, who is now sitting up with her back against the wall eating a sandwich Noah just brought her.
"No, thank you," Erin answers. "Her vitals are good and she came around quickly. She has a diagnosed vasovagal syndrome."
"Understood," he says before heading out. "Eat all of it," he tells Mia, and she gives a nod before taking another bite.