The crestfallen leading lady's eyes followed Dickie Glenroy out of her dressing room, and when the two of them finally found themselves alone, without daring to look at her director, Loretta turned her head towards the mirror next to her. Oliver watched silently as she tapped her fingertips to her chin and, evidently unaware of the stirring effect it had on him, anxiously started chewing on her lip.

In the long hollow silence that stretched torturously between them Loretta blinked desperately at the tears that, although they didn't escape her eyes, were obvious in her squeak of a voice when she eventually said, "I'm sorry." Her slender fingers pressed over her quivering lips. "I'm so sorry, Oliver."

Spurred on by the urgent rush to soothe her unjustly rooted guilt, Oliver sprang forward. The clatter of the chair as he seized it and turned it to face her made Loretta jump, and Oliver took a seat closely opposite her.

"Loretta. Look at me," he implored, eagerly covering the hand lying limply in her lap and letting go again with remembered alarm. His touch rather than the possible pain the movement had summoned coaxed his star to face his earnestly reassuring countenance.

"No one is blaming you," Oliver emphasized, looking steadily into Loretta's disconsolate glistening eyes and unknowingly letting his expressive hands illustrate his words. "No one. But I would like to know. What happened? Did that railing just fall apart on its own? That latch that we put there—did it just open all on its own? I mean, I don't understand. What were you even doing on that side of the platform? That's where Ben's supposed to be, not you."

"Please stop yelling at me," Loretta whispered feebly between shallow breaths.

Stunned at her sudden naked vulnerability and at the silent tears that had started to fall at his tirade, Oliver, who hadn't raised his voice in the slightest, immediately softened his tone nevertheless. "I'm not yelling," he assured her with a concerned apologetic edge to his voice. "I'm not- I'm sorry. I'm just- I'm so scared, you can't even imagine."

A surprised clarity flashed into Loretta's shy eyes when she looked back up at him, but whatever astounded truth was hovering between those tender parted lips of hers, it never got released into the candid breathless space of trust between the director and actress, because an insistent rapping on the door startled them apart.

Immediately after, a tall man with a large leather bag entered the little room, and Oliver stood to make room for him. "Hello," the man, who was significantly younger than the two theatre folk and who had a serious but kind look about him, introduced himself, shaking hands with Oliver. "I'm Dr. Fletcher. Miss DeMeo told me I would find you here."

"Hi. Loretta Durkin," Loretta greeted her long-awaited saviour but when the man reached out his hand, with a playfully apologetic twitch of the lips she added, "I can't raise this hand."

"I see." The doctor settled into the chair opposite Loretta and set his medical bag on the dressing table. "Would you tell me what happened to you, please?" he got straight to the point, his eyes already scanning the unnaturally strained position in which the woman in front of him was holding her right arm.

Loretta's eyes fluttered almost imperceptibly to her director and back before she explained, "I f-fell… from the lighthouse on stage." Within an impressive instant she had her walls of confidence up again and left Oliver to wonder whether her determined charm was displayed merely for this stranger's sake.

"And how high is this lighthouse from the floor?"

"'Bout nine feet," Oliver put in helpfully.

His eyes lighting up with prompt worry, the doctor quickly glanced over the whole unwavering display that was Loretta and the softening of his frown gave away his apparent surprise at her state. "You've had a lucky fall," Dr. Fletcher commented, more or less fooled by Loretta's unconcerned front. "Where exactly does it hurt?"

With feigned but masterful nonchalance Loretta raised her left hand to indicate the abnormally angled shoulder. "Just my shoulder, here."

"May I?" Dr. Fletcher asked, gesturing towards her blouse, and Loretta hummed her agreement. The man's hand hovered hesitantly over her chest when he turned to look back at a sharply observant Oliver and mentioned, "I believe some privacy would be appreciated."

Her eyes widening at the suggestion simultaneously with Oliver's, as if she, too, was dreading the ridiculously fleeting scraping sensation of being lost without the other, Loretta surprised them all, including herself, with a composed, "I would rather he stayed."

Oliver could feel a silly boyish twitch at the corners of his mouth but tensed up when he registered Loretta's fingers already twisting apart the buttons on her blouse. "I'll just… look away," he stammered, turning his nose against the door frame. "I'll… yeah."

Swiftly accepting, the doctor returned his attention from the indirect tension-filled exchange to his patient and inquired seriously, "Just the shoulder and not the arm, right?"

"That's right."

Oliver could feel Loretta's timid gaze on him while the director himself kept his eyes nailed to the red Paisley shawl hanging on the corner of the mirror on the door. Upon closer observation the pattern was so intricate and extravagant and yet the comprehensive effect was beautifully simple, and Oliver's confidence thrived on the recognition that the result was acutely reminiscent of the shawl's owner—and that Loretta was, in this respect, the complete and ideal opposite of him.

"Did you fall head first?" Oliver's ears pricked up at the intriguing suspicion.

"I'm not sure," Loretta's poise faltered at the recollection. "I hit my head, I think."

"Tell me which of these hurts, if you can," Dr. Fletcher instructed in a calm professional tone—much too collected, in Oliver's opinion, for someone allowed to probe this precious creature in one of her most vulnerable moments.

Holding his breath as he awaited the imminent gut-wrenching sounds, Oliver imagined the doctor lifting the bra strap off of the shoulder under scrutiny and deftly feeling the muscles around Loretta's upper arm, discreetly grazing her collarbone and pressing down into the soft flesh around her shoulder. Oliver winced sharply at a strangled squeak from behind him.

"There, that- That's where," a faint confirmation followed.

"Not here?"

"No, it was-" Loretta sucked in a tight breath when the doctor's hands returned to the bane of her injury, and a moment later a short relieved peep indicated that the contact had been broken.

Lowering his voice, perhaps with the intentions of an apology, Dr. Fletcher concluded, "I'm glad to see you didn't break a bone there. It would have been very probable." A moment of contemplation passed, and Oliver jumped around at the sound of his name being called, ready to do whatever necessary to ease the pain Loretta was fighting valiantly to keep at bay but which had revealed itself in her voice. "Mr. Putnam, could you get us an ice pack?"

Studiously avoiding the ample skin showing, Oliver looked to Loretta for permission, and a matching air of weary confusion wafted between them at the doctor's remark, "Miss Durkin is going to need it in a moment."

On his quest Oliver tore though the backstage area faster than a chorus girl on amphetamine. He managed to snap at Howard and crack a ground-breaking joke at Charles's expense in one glorious fell swoop before obtaining the ice pack from a for-once-helpful but otherwise hyperventilating Cliff.

With a distant but unmistakable squeak of pain from the dressing room down the hall urging him on, Oliver rushed back without even bothering to mull over whether or not he ought to knock. There were once again tears in Loretta's eyes when he returned but, astoundingly, her shoulder appeared entirely natural—if it weren't for the already appearing dark blot of a bruise gathering below the end of her collarbone.

Oliver responded instantly to the hand reaching out shakily but urgently for the ice pack, and as Loretta pressed it to her skin with a violent wince, Oliver struggled to push the vivid mental image of the doctor attempting to manoeuvre back her shoulder subluxation out of his head.

"Now, you said you hit your head," Dr. Fletcher moved on to the next order of business after Loretta had placed her blouse between her skin and the pack at his silent insistence. "Where exactly, can you remember?"

Loretta grimaced briefly in pain when her first instinct to indicate the spot of contact with her right hand revealed itself to be the distinctly wrong choice. She tapped the right side of her jaw with her left thumb, courtesy of the hand holding the ice pack in place. "Well, it was- 'Twas this side."

"Which side?" Dr. Fletcher queried pointedly.

"This one." A reprised tapping accompanied the actress's reply.

"What's it called?" Dr. Fletcher persisted adamantly.

Loretta paused in confusion at the strange question and squeezed her eyes shut to rustle it into comprehension. She started to answer and her eyes flashed open with panic for a sliver of a moment, confessing to a fleeting vacancy in her mind. "Right. It's right," she recovered quickly.

With a low hum of acknowledgement the doctor tipped closer to study the inconspicuous right side of her head. "I wonder," he mentioned thoughtfully, and after finding not a scratch of physical evidence of the fall on the woman's face, turned to his medical bag and fished out a small flash-light. "Would you recite a scene from your play for me?"

The clear sheen of Loretta's questioning gaze startled Oliver with the realization that he was still a part of this scene and not merely the audience. He performed a clueless but permitting shrug, and to his star that meant action.

As unexpectedly and instantly as always Loretta jumped into character and declared with the self-assertive confidence of the Nanny, "I'm happy to tell you who I am and what it is I do without your insistent probing."

If Dr. Fletcher was taken aback by the abrupt change in his patient, he hid it well behind a refined mask of approving recognition, and he raised the flash-light up to check her pupils.

Unfazed by the glaring light directed into her eyes, Loretta pressed on, "I am a caretaker of children, to whom I'm…" A tangle of words was lost in an incoherent mumble before her concentration returned.

"I'm their mother when I'm… with them. Because children need to feel, above all, safe… They need to be- to feel- Um, with the ferocit- No, with the kind of… kind of ferocity only m-mothers can." Her alarmed eyes flittered about helplessly, distracting the doctor from his examination. "It's no matter if they were born of… of my own or if- if…"

"Thank you," Dr. Fletcher put a merciful end to her muddled monologue. "That's enough, Miss Durkin."

With a crestfallen assumption of failure hanging over her expression Loretta looked up to see the bewildered horror with which Oliver was watching her. He had seen her give a flawless, deeply moving performance of that scene each and every time in rehearsals and previews alike and it felt alien to hear those lines stumbled over with such distracted tentativeness.

Dr. Fletcher returned the flash-light to his bag, seeing no need to examine the actress further. "It appears you have a concussion," he decided, "and not a mild one."

"Oh my God…" Oliver reacted heavily, running a hand through his hair.

"You'll need a lot of rest in the next few days." The doctor snapped his medical bag shut. "No performances."

"But I-"

"No-no, we understand," Oliver quickly intervened, shutting down Loretta's imminent protest with unprecedented rationality, his placating hands supporting his firm decision.

The doctor applauded his decision with an appreciative nod and turned back to Loretta. For the first time a sliver of compassion showed from behind his dedicated mask of professionalism as he began to disperse instructions, "Take a painkiller when you start to feel a headache, which should be soon, and drink plenty of water. If the headache persists or keeps getting worse, you should submit yourself to a hospital to check that there's not a more serious condition. You'll have to be very observant of your health in the next 24 hours."

He turned to the director teetering beside him and carefully making mental notes to remember everything being said. "She should not be alone during this time," the doctor mentioned pointedly, and Oliver gave a strangled grunt.

Dr. Fletcher paid his peculiar reaction no mind and levelly asked his patient, "Can someone take you home and look after you?"

Loretta appeared helplessly lost and utterly unprepared for this development. "Well, I could ask Dickie…" she contemplated hesitantly, visibly uncertain of her tentative decision to ask her co-star's manager for such intimate help.

Without stopping to consider what he was getting himself into—and, admittedly, doing so would only have convinced him further—Oliver jumped in with a brisk, "No-no! I can- I can take care of this. All of this."

Firmly gripping a box of Schmackary's cookies in her hands Donna swept up to the older pair retreating towards the staircase. Their demure leading lady was clinging tightly to her director's arm, and Donna felt a surge of warm compassion for the vivacious woman she had grown rather fond of throughout the rehearsal period.

As of late the producer also harboured a secret sincere gratitude towards the actress, because her misfortune, although unintentional, had prevented Donna from becoming a killer—never mind that her readiness to produce the appropriate circumstances had already made her one in her own eyes.

She hadn't found the laced Death Rattle cookie when she had sneaked back into Ben's dressing room after Loretta's accident, but her initial panic had been soothed by the very actor swaggering past her only moments later in the hallway. Donna could not deny she was surprised that Ben had, apparently, overcome his compulsion and thrown the cookie away.

"Loretta, dear," Donna addressed the actress as she approached her. "I hope you feel better soon."

"Thank you," Loretta smiled back at her, but the natural angelic purity in her face was tainted by her conviction of guilt. "And I'm so sorry for-"

Not about to take any self-critical emotional battering from this sweetheart, Donna shushed her with a sharp but considerate gesture that left no room for argument. "It's not your fault that Oliver is cursed."

Oliver grunted self-consciously, and a box of Schmackary's for Loretta was shoved into his hands.

What was meant to be the end of their exchange was interrupted by an unidentified clatter from the other end of the hallway, and three heads turned to see Ben staggering against one of the side tables set up in the narrow corridor. His abrupt collapse coincided with Oliver calling out his name in alarmed astonishment.

After studying the new and bothersome mess on her hands for a tense moment of shock, Donna turned back to snarl, perhaps too accusingly, all things considered, at Oliver, "You really are cursed."

Then with a sinking feeling in her stomach she turned on her heel to march towards the motionless heap of a star sprawled out on the floor, snapping, "KT! Get back here!"

"Is he okay?" Loretta worried as the commotion summoned the rest of the cast and crew into the backstage corridor, cutting the heart of the scene from their view. Dickie brushed past them, pushing through the crowd towards his brother.

Oliver offered a weak yelp of indecision before the remembered grasp around his arm brought his attention back to his most pressing mission. "I guess they're going to manage without us," he decided with a tight edge of uncertainty to his voice, and guided his ward once again towards the stairs. "Come on. I don't want you standing for too long."

The only stop they made on their way to find a taxi was in the already almost empty entrance hall of the Goosebury theatre, where Oliver realized the need to save what could be saved of his ill-fated opening night party.

"… and hide away all the food, so that Winnie doesn't go crazy from the smells," he was telling Charles, who, apparently, had access to their director's apartment. "There should be a little room in the fridge next to the dips. And I'll get Will to walk Winnie tonight, so he might drop in a little later."

"Don't worry, we'll take care of everything," the pretty young woman by Charles's side assured him.

"And I'll feed Mrs. Gambolini," Charles promised, and Loretta suppressed a powerful amused urge to ask who the madame in question was.

"Great," Oliver agreed.

"You take care, Loretta," Charles turned to the woman Oliver was already ushering towards the front doors.

"Thanks," she piped up, trying with all her might to fit into that solitary word all her touched gratitude for the man who had tended to her with such careful devotion in those first frightening minutes after her fall.

Out of all the things Oliver could have been disgruntled about at this very moment it wasn't the fact that his ailing career had taken a short cut to the nearest Broadway dumpster or that his singular creative vision would not be appreciated by thousands, not even that the well-meant promises of success he had praised his best friend with had come to nothing. What Oliver was most disheartened about was the fact that after fifteen years of repenting he had made the same devastating mistake all over again.

Back then he had had his chance to prevent the disaster and it had been entirely his fault that he had told them to go ahead—a mistake he had sworn to never repeat. What was so depressing was that this time he didn't even get the chance to call the shot and the catastrophe took place before he could stop it. With a bitter conscience Oliver mused on the idea that he really ought to stop experimenting with elevated sets designs.

His subsequent quick decision-making was staggering even to himself. A much younger, legendarily headstrong Oliver Putnam would have put on the show no matter what—if he could train an elephant for a show, he could get an injured actor to stumble through an opening night. Silently he thanked his lucky stars that he was no longer that mulish daredevil showman and that the woman currently riding next to him in the cab had unwittingly led him out of his smog of showbiz illusions enough to convince him that there were things in life that were not worth risking.

"I should have been there," he confessed his regret into the dull tepid silence of the taxicab.

The speed with which the reply came was testimony of Loretta's thoughts lingering around the accident at fight call as well. "You couldn't have known…"

"I should have been there," Oliver insisted, turning to give her a stern look for better effect, only to find Loretta determinedly scanning the twinkling city lights and passing cars outside the window. Huddled into the corner of the seat in her black coat, which helped her melt into one with the upholstery, she somehow appeared even smaller, as if she were hoping to disappear altogether to escape this disappointment of a night.

It was in this moment that it struck Oliver, for the first and only time, how incredibly, excruciatingly different the two of them were. Even at the weakest hour of his career, he was larger than life, loud and vibrant, confident in both his decisions and their—but never his—insignificance. She was transparent, weightless, almost shapeless against the backdrop, invisible until he had seen her, and yet somehow she carried the weight and wistful wisdom of the world.

As the tension resumed for a few more anxious stops and starts of the cab in the packed city traffic, Loretta seemed to consider his words. At the next red light, with a sad twitch of her lips, she said, "You probably had more important things to do."

Oliver rolled his eyes in self-depreciating frustration. "I was checking the lighting with the tech people and re-confirming my order of hors d'oeuvres that no one is going to eat. Unless," he added wryly, "you want to take this little party to my place and feast on a fridgeful of dinner rolls and shrimp."

He felt victorious at his feat of coaxing an incredulous amused gulp of laughter out of Loretta.

"Exactly," he noted, but followed it up with a grunted sigh as his compunction returned. "It was such a stressful night, I should have known I needed to be there. Just to make sure. You just… never know when your whole life could be turned upside down in one seemingly insignificant moment."

Oliver's eyes jumped back to Loretta's studiously closed-off face, afraid that the woman, who was sitting next to him and regretting that the show she had put an end to meant the whole world to the director, might have realized that she was, in fact, whom his whole life pivoted around.

He was unsuccessful in finding any such evidence, however, because it was at that moment that his phone rang and he was forced to dig around for it in his pockets. He answered it with an annoyed grumble, in that everyday irritable tone that had unnerved Loretta at first but which she had learned to accept as part of Oliver's extravagant persona and which only amused her now.

"Yes, Lester, you can let Charles into my apartment. What's he gonna do? Steal Mrs. Gambolini?"