Allison Payne, who has been on leave for over a month because of issues with her vocal cords, has returned to Chicago’s WGN for a series of practice newscasts.

Here’s Chicago media reporter Robert Feder:

In this week’s installment of the real-life soap opera, our troubled heroine shows up for work Monday after more than a month away and goes through the motions of anchoring a newscast on the set of WGN-Channel 9, more or less as she has for the past 21 years.

But in this case, it’s all just pretend–to see if Payne can make it though 20 minutes on camera without losing her voice or having some other sort of meltdown.

Payne is set to do two more mock newscasts this week and WGN news director Greg Caputo tells Feder that he expects the veteran anchor to be back on the air by the end of the week.