Hitting the Right Note

by Rhonda Bowen

  Over the crowd, JJ managed to hear Diana give the count with her sticks. Sabrina followed the timing on vocals.

  “One, two, three, four!”

  Diana came in strong and confident on the drums and cymbals, followed by the other women. Kya stepped forward with the vocals for the hook in “Satisfied,” the headlining song for the tour. They had practiced that song so much that JJ could perform it blindfolded with earplugs, in her sleep. The other women fell in with the harmony. The whole thing went as smooth as butter.

  “And now, the man you’ve all been waiting for, three-time Grammy-award winner, Deacon Hill!”

  JJ didn’t think the crowd could get any louder, but when Deacon stepped onstage, the screams jumped a few decibels. As she watched him, she couldn’t help but smile. That man was a performer like no other. He never stopped moving once he got onstage and his energy seemed boundless.

  Performing was not like rehearsal. Rehearsal was long, tedious, and painful. But performance was fast, electrifying, and exhilarating. The minutes felt like seconds and they flew through the first half of the show. JJ had never taken drugs, but she imagined this was what being high felt like. Being onstage was nothing like she had ever experienced before. And being onstage with Deacon Hill was miles away from singing with Jayla Grey. When you went from crowds of hundreds to crowds of thousands, there was no comparison.

  “Oh my God, that was amazing!” JJ screamed to Diana as they ran offstage after Deacon’s encore. They laughed and hugged each other as well as the other members of the band. Even Sabrina-too-cool-for-school was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You guys were awesome,” Sabrina said, hugging all of them. “I am so proud of you.”

  “Proud of us,” Diana corrected. “We all rocked tonight, including you.”

  “I think we deserve to celebrate, ladies!” Kya announced.

  Sabrina nodded in agreement. “I’m all about that! Get your stuff. I think all of us are heading out on the town tonight.”

  “Okay, just let me change, and I’ll meet you guys out back,” JJ said.

  “Change for what?” Kya asked. “We look hot. These dresses look like the one Rihanna wore at that club in Paris after she ditched Chris Brown.”

  “These dresses look like the lingerie I bought my sister for her honeymoon, put through a shredder,” JJ said dryly. “I’m changing.”

  She left the other girls laughing at the scowl on Kya’s face and headed to the dressing room. She had barely adjusted to the wardrobe requirements of the music industry. All her clothes had suddenly become tighter, shorter, and more transparent, all because—according to Rayshawn—she needed to look the part. Most of it she could handle, but some of it had been a challenge to her values. However, from what she had seen so far, the Deacon Hill tour wardrobe would require her to stretch them even further.

  Just one more thing she needed to get used to. But she could handle all of it for this amazing opportunity.

  What she couldn’t handle was the tour-style partying that had gone down even before they started their first show, and that was about to go down tonight. JJ had experienced a bit of it two nights earlier, and she was still reeling from the experience. Alcohol indulgence at insane amounts, pill popping, magic cigarettes. Anything you could imagine, it was going on. JJ had barely lasted fifteen minutes before she made some excuse to go home. As she changed into something she could sit in, she considered opting out of this evening’s expedition also. But it was too early to start acting like a loner on tour. So she would do what she had done the night before: stay fifteen minutes then make up some excuse to leave.

  She applied some lip gloss and stuffed all her clothes and cosmetics into her bag. She was barely into week one. They had seven more weeks to go. JJ hoped she could survive it. She looked at herself in the mirror and sighed.

  “Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  Chapter 16

  “Where’s the fire, man?”

  Simon slowed his run down to a brisk walk, allowing Nigel to catch up with him.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon asked, glancing at his friend with a grin. “Can’t keep up?”

  Nigel panted as he tried to keep pace. “Not with whatever you’re chasing. Wanna let a brother in on what’s going on?”

  “Not really,” Simon responded, his feet pounding the pavement in sync with Nigel’s.

  “Great,” Nigel responded with more enthusiasm than Simon thought was merited. “Now I get the fun of guessing.”

  Simon took a swig of his water, knowing better than to try and dissuade his friend from the topic. Even if Nigel didn’t know Simon as well as he did, he would know that Simon was terrible at hiding his emotions. And right then his emotions were in more turmoil than ever.

  “Let’s see, is it work?”

  “What would I stress about here?” Simon asked, thinking about all the Toronto hospitals he had been to since his arrival, with their modern equipment and sufficient staffing.

  “Ah yes, nothing in our civilized world stresses the wilderness doctor,” Nigel said dryly.

  Simon chuckled and kept jogging.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s good,” Simon said. “Great, even.”

  “Still consistent in her efforts to marry you off and start the next generation of Massris?”

  “As ever.”

  “Any potential match-ups rattling your cage?”

  “She’s too busy organizing Dad’s retirement banquet for that,” Simon said. “But I’m sure she’ll come up with someone by then.”

  “Then it can only be one thing.” Nigel glanced over at Simon. “Elevator Girl.”

  Simon picked up his pace again and pulled ahead of Nigel. He heard his friend’s laugh echo behind him.

  “And we have a winner!”

  Simon could ignore Nigel all he wanted. But he couldn’t ignore the truth. He was thinking about JJ. It had been thirteen days, three hours and twenty-seven minutes since he had last seen her. As she had requested, he was calling her to update her on Sheree’s status every couple days. Most times he had to be satisfied with her voice mail. But the rare occasions where he got her on the phone were like precious gifts. They were short conversations, the longest being only ten minutes, and she almost always sounded tired. But the calls helped soothe the irritation that came from not seeing her as regularly as he had before she went on tour. During their last talk, the conversation had slipped away from Sheree and on to how she was doing. She admitted that life on the road was more work and less glamor than she’d thought, and that it was beginning to take its toll on her. He had struggled with what to say to her then. Everything he wanted to express was inappropriate for his position as her sister-in-law’s doctor. But the truth was, he had crossed over that line from the first moment he saw her in Sheree’s hospital room.

  That night on the phone, he felt like she would have said more too, but then she had been called into early rehearsal. He was worried about her. He had a feeling she wasn’t doing well.

  “You still calling her every day?” Nigel asked.

  “Every couple of days,” Simon corrected, noting that even though he had not slowed down again, his friend was now managing to keep up.

  “Heck, that’s more often than I call my girlfriend.”

  “You, however, are a scoundrel,” Simon said.

  Nigel grinned mischievously. “You got me there.”

  “Besides, I only call to give her updates . . .”

  “Of course,” Nigel said. “Because there’s no way her family could do that.”

  “She asked me to,” Simon countered.

  “Of course she did.”

  “She gave me her number—I didn’t ask for it.”

  “But you were very happy to take it, I’m sure,” Nigel said.

  Simon reached out and punched his friend in the arm.

  “Oww,” Nigel groaned, faltering as he grabbed his shoulder. “What’d you do that for?”

&nb
sp; “The truth hurts,” Simon said with a grin.

  “Yeah,” Nigel said, rubbing his sore arm. “And it’s gonna hurt you if you don’t do something about this woman.”

  “It’s nothing,” Simon said. “It’s just shocking to see her again, after all these years.”

  “It was shocking two months ago when you first ran into her,” Nigel said. “Now it’s something else. You’re checking in with her every day—”

  “Every other day.”

  “—going in to work on your day off for her, changing your schedule to stay in Canada because she asked you to.” Nigel shook his head. “Buddy, this is beyond shock. This is. . . you know what this is.”

  “Okay, fine,” Simon said, letting out a breath. “I might be a little attracted to her—”

  “Try a lot.”

  “—but her sister-in-law is my patient and she’s all over the place, literally. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Get over her or get under her.”

  Simon nearly hit the pavement face-first at his friend’s words. He stumbled to a stop and stared at him. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Nigel said, stopping a few steps away. “And you know exactly what I mean. Hit it, quit it, and get it out of your system.”

  Simon shook his head and started jogging again. “I can’t believe those words just came out of your mouth. You know I don’t get down like that.”

  Nigel rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah. I forgot. You’re saving yourself for Wonder Woman.”

  Simon snorted.

  “Okay, let me put it to you in good-boy terms then,” Nigel said. “Either you test the waters with Elevator Girl to see if something’s there, or you hook up with someone else and get her out of your head. But either way, you gotta do something. ’Cause this limbo you’re sitting in is painful to watch, bruh.”

  “Whatever. You’re exaggerating,” Simon said.

  “Really,” Nigel said. “Did you see those two women running, in very tiny shorts, who were just checking us out?”

  “What women?” Simon asked, looking around.

  “Exactly,” Nigel said. He shook his head. “Massri, do something.”

  Nigel’s words were still ringing in Simon’s head an hour later as he emerged from the showers in the staff changing room at the hospital. His unsanctified friend was usually the last one he would take advice from, given their vastly differing perspectives on life. But in this case, maybe he had a point. He should at least try to see if there was room for friendship with JJ. Maybe that was why he got the chance to see her again after all these years. Maybe they were supposed to be in each other’s lives. He wouldn’t know for sure until he explored it.

  But first he had to check in with the woman who was becoming his favorite patient.

  Fully dressed and chart in hand, he headed down the maternity ward.

  “How’s mother and baby doing today?” he asked, entering Sheree’s hospital room, which with its growing collection of flowers, books, magazines, and DVDs, seemed to look more like a home bedroom every day.

  “Doing good, as far as I can see,” said Janice, the nurse JJ was friendly with. She looked up from where she sat in a chair by Sheree’s bedside. Both women had been peering at a bridal magazine, and several others were scattered at the foot of Sheree’s hospital bed. It looked like Sheree had managed to draw the woman in as much as JJ had. He had noticed that about Sheree. During her days at the hospital, she managed to make friends with many of the nurses and staff, even some who weren’t involved in her care. Rare were the times when he would come to check on her and not find someone there. The one person he hadn’t noticed, however, was the father of her child, and even though she never said much about the man, Simon suspected it bothered her that he wasn’t there.

  “Did you know that Janice is getting married in a couple months?” Sheree asked, her eyes bright. “I was just telling her that she should get my sister-in-law Sydney to do her cake. She has an amazing gourmet pastry shop—probably the best in Toronto.”

  “If she’s doing well enough by then, Sheree says she could do my hair,” Janice added. “So I was just looking at styles with her on my break.”

  “Well, I hate to break up the wedding planning session, but I thought it would be a good time to check on Baby Isaacs,” Simon said with a smile. “What do you say, Sheree?”

  Sheree nodded. “I’m down with that.”

  Janice cleared the magazines from the bed and placed them on the side table. “I’ll go get the items for the ultrasound.”

  Simon pulled a rolling stool up to Sheree’s bedside and sat down when Janice stepped out of the room.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Physically? Pretty fine. Not much change, which, given what’s going on, is probably a good thing,” Sheree said with a forced laugh.

  “And other wise?” Simon probed, sensing there was more.

  “Otherwise? Maybe a little anxious,” Sheree said hesitantly.

  Simon’s brow furrowed. “Oh?”

  Sheree shrugged and dropped her eyes. “Everything is in flux, you know? Anything could happen at any moment with the baby, and that’s a little scary. Plus I don’t really have any family other than my brother, and he’s away.”

  “Well, things have been pretty stable over the past couple weeks,” Simon reassured her. “Like you said, nothing has changed. In the last few tests your levels have been good, the baby looks good, and if we maintain at this pace, you should have a safe delivery in two months.”

  “I know, I know.” Sheree sighed. “JJ used to tell me that every day. It was nice having that positive support all the time to counteract my negative thinking. I really miss her.”

  Simon nodded. That made two of them. “It’s different not having her around as much, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Sheree said. “She makes sure to call every day, but it’s not the same. Plus I get the feeling she’s pretty stressed herself with her tour. I spoke with her early this morning from New York, and she sounded terrible—like she was getting sick. I don’t like the idea of her being cooped up alone and sick in a hotel, even if it is the Marriott. Do you get that sense too, when you call her?”

  Simon was surprised at the question, and it took him a moment to answer.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, I talk to her voice mail more than I talk to her. She is a busy woman, and she only asked me to keep her updated.”

  Sheree looked at him a long moment. Simon could almost see the gears turning in her mind before she seemed to come to some sort of decision.

  “Dr. Massri, can I ask you a personal question?” Sheree asked.

  “Uh, sure,” Simon said hesitantly. He glanced at the door. What was taking Janice so long?

  “And I need you to give it to me straight,” Sheree said.

  He cleared his throat again. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “You like my sister-in-law, don’t you?”

  Simon blinked several times, opening and closing his mouth.

  “Uh . . . I don’t know if I should be . . .”

  “She told me the elevator story,” Sheree said knowingly.

  Simon closed his mouth. Then closed his eyes. If he hadn’t just left Nigel in the staff locker rooms, Simon would have thought that he and Sheree were conspiring together. When he opened his eyes again, Sheree was staring at him expectantly.

  “Well?”

  He took a deep breath. “Sheree, you’re my patient. Judith is your sister—”

  “In-law.”

  “—and it’s complicated,” he finished.

  “But don’t you think it’s a crazy coincidence that you would see her again? After all these years?” Sheree asked.

  Simon cracked his fingers and glanced at the door. Where in the world was Janice?

  “I see the way you look at her,” Sheree continued. “I know you’re attracted to her. And I think there’s something on her side too. I’m not asking you to start something with her, but when you ca
ll her, can you just. . . see if she’s okay? If she needs something? She won’t tell me ’cause she’s too busy worrying about me. But she might tell you . . .”

  “Sheree, my relationship with Judith is completely professional.”

  “Dr. Massri, please,” Sheree said as the door opened. “Can you just try?”

  Simon glanced over at Janice, who had returned with a trayful of items and was looking at the two of them curiously.

  “Please?” Sheree asked again.

  Simon had a feeling she wouldn’t take no for an answer, and unless he wanted the whole hospital to know about his feelings for JJ, he needed to end this conversation fast.

  “Okay, I’ll try,” he said, giving her a look that told her to drop it. She smiled in understanding.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded. “Now how about we get to this ultrasound?”

  Sheree pulled down the sheet and pulled up her gown to expose her rounded belly.

  “Let’s go!”

  Chapter 17

  “Okay, ladies, let’s take it from the top. Diana, you need to come in strong at the start. Kya, easy on that bass—you are not the lead for this one. And, JJ, pick it up. Your vocals are strong, but you’re falling behind with the guitar.”

  JJ took another swig of her energy drink before lifting the strap of the electric guitar back over her shoulder. Most days she liked Sabrina. But it was nine-thirty p.m. and the band had been rehearsing since midafternoon, and even her Nitro wasn’t going to be enough to get her through another hour. Usually she could cope with the long hours, but they had performed at New York’s Madison Square Garden the night before and still had had to get up midmorning to do choreography and a quick run-through with Deacon. After no more than an hour’s break for lunch, the girls had gone straight into rehearsal with Deacon, then She-La band rehearsal without him, where Sabrina was pushing harder than usual. She suspected it was because Sabrina had had a fight the night before with Deacon. Anytime the two of them fought, everyone had to pay for it in rehearsal. This is why performers should never date each other.