Hayley Erbert Hough’s emotional return to the Dancing with the Stars floor was unexpected by her husband, DWTS judge Derek Hough, considering her recovery from emergency surgery in December 2023.
Hayley, 30, and Derek, 39, spoke exclusively to PEOPLE after their performance of Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” on the Tuesday, Oct. 15 live show. They discussed what their ballroom return meant following Hayley’s unexpected hospitalization for a cranial hematoma, which is characterized by blood collecting in the skull, and an emergency craniectomy.
“When they played the package, that’s when I started losing it because I haven’t seen a lot of the footage in quite some time because I’ve just been focusing on progressing every single day,” Hayley, who is 30, told PEOPLE. “To return to that, I experienced a flood of emotions, yet being here was truly exceptional.”
The former member of the DWTS dancing company adds, “This fall was always the most welcoming energy, and it was wonderful to be here and share it with him.” And I am simply grateful to be here.”
Derek said in a trailer promoting Hayley’s return to the DWTS ballroom that he found out his wife was “essentially dying” in the middle of their Symphony of Dance tour. “We rush her to the hospital; she’s still in her costume, and the doctor came to me, and he said, ‘She has a severe brain bleed, so we have to operate right now,'” Hough said in the video. “He said that she might not make it and that even if she does make it, she won’t be the same person.”
“I was like in those moments we never even thought; it was not even a thought like, ‘Oh, we’re going to dance again,’ honestly,” Derek elaborates to PEOPLE. “And then being here is fantastic. It’s just difficult to put into words.
“Tonight was just sort of the beginning of telling the full story,” he says later. “We provided some further footage and images of what had transpired to demonstrate the gravity of the situation. But this is only the beginning; there is so much more to this narrative, and we are thrilled to share the whole of it.”
The pair continued to discuss the rituals they had begun to practice before concerts following Hayley’s medical crisis.
“When we go on tour, all the dancers in the crew, we all have these little badges that say if there are any signs of this, this, this, or that, we need to find a medical team or something,” says Derek to PEOPLE. “Just so we are informed. We’re simply being really careful. To ensure her protection and security at all times, I am extremely attentive and mindful of our actions and movements.
“I can detect when anything is amiss, and I’ll say, ‘Ooh, that doesn’t feel right. ” I shouldn’t be doing this move or doing this number,” she explains. “And so I feel like I am being smart in that way of just being like, I’m going to listen to myself.”