A/N: Sorry for the delay. You all got preempted by my Dad, still fighting stage IV cancer but doing much better than his lowest point last fall. Fanfic can wait.

But I do love this story, and I promise, it will be completed. Short update now, hopefully more within this next week.

(H/C)

His hand gripped hers back with full pressure, and that voice tickled her ear as she leaned over the fence toward him. "Close your eyes."

She stiffened up, some remnant of rationality asserting itself against the spell of the moment. "What? Why?"

"Because you can't see anything otherwise."

She studied his face, so close, just across that barrier but within two feet of hers. The evening storm light was bad and diminishing by the minute, but she could see that he was handsome in a rugged sort of way. The lines of his face might have been carved by a master sculptor. Intelligence, strength, pain.

Pain? The thought had joined the mental list automatically, and she tried to dissect it further on one level, even while protesting. "What do you mean I can't see anything otherwise? If I close my eyes, I really won't be able to see anything."

"Temporarily, yes. But the results at the end of the darkness will, I think, be worth it to you. Wouldn't you like a tour of my world?"

The prohibition from the PPTH powers that be flitted briefly through her mind and as quickly left. Their silly rule compared to the opportunity finally in front of her wasn't close to being an equal contest. "Yes," she said.

"Then close your eyes." She studied his for almost a full minute, then finally closed her lids. Lightning sparked in the sky over the city, briefly raising the light level even with her eyes shut.

There was an odd-sounding click, and then he gripped her elbow. "Three steps forward," he told her.

She took three steps, trusting him that she wouldn't run into that gate. No, the gate was suddenly out of the way. She stopped and wondered how he had done that; she'd studied the lock many times. It had the unmistakable rusty patina of long disuse. Would he really notice if she cracked her eyelids for a brief glance?

In the next moment, his hands were at her head, and something soft went across her eyes, thoroughly blindfolding her. "Hey!" She backed up, and that time, she did hit the gate. Retreat was shut off. "I closed my eyes. Don't you trust me?"

There was an oddly extended pause. "Everybody lies, Cuddy," he said. "It's just temporary. Or I can put you back across onto the other side right now. But if I do, you'll never know where we were about to go."

Damn the man or ghost or whatever he was. She gritted her teeth, pride and independence warring against her own curiosity and his magnetism. He had fastened the blindfold, but they remained motionless as he politely waited for her decision. "All right," she conceded finally. "But it's temporary."

"Yes. Everything is temporary when you come down to it."

"So now you're a philosopher? What is your name, anyway?"

"I've told you. Maestro of Medicine."

"And your parents called you that?"

He backed away physically and mentally, though he kept hold of her elbow with his left hand, and his voice had a harsh edge when he spoke. "Let's go." As if to agree with him, the skies opened at that point, and the rain began.

He started forward, guiding her carefully but still almost at a distance. Annoyance at his evasion and at the blindfold quickly yielded to curiosity and growing concern. As they started walking, it was immediately obvious that he was lame. This wasn't an acute injury but a long-standing pattern, a stride he knew well. No hesitation, no tentativeness; in fact, he had a good bit of speed and an odd sort of grace to it. But his right leg, the one farther away from her, clearly wasn't working normally or anywhere close to it. She could also hear the beat of a cane supplementing each step.

He stopped them, opening a door, and then they were out of the rain. "What's wrong with your leg?" she asked.

He came to a dead stop, though his breathing accelerated as if he had started running. After a lengthy silence, he snapped, "Do you want to see this world, or not?"

Never had he locked up that much on her, not even when she asked for his name. "Yes," she replied. "I didn't mean to offend . . ."

"If you want anything past this moment with me, hear this. Never mention my leg again." He resumed forward motion, his limp worse for the first few strides. "Stairs here. Ten steps down."

She reached out with her left hand, the arm he didn't have hold of, and found a railing. Stairs were clearly much harder for him, but she had learned her lesson and followed his painful progress in silence. Once at the bottom, he walked on without speaking.

The route was labyrinthine, and it didn't take her long to deduce that he was deliberately making it challenging. She was doing her best to keep track of turns, but it soon became impossible. She had the feeling he turned her in the middle of rooms sometimes, not even at adjoining hallways. Then they boarded an elevator. She couldn't resist a question there.

"The power isn't shut off over here?"

"Actually, no. By terms of the will, they have to keep the building in fair condition. They just can't use it. Buildings with all power and heat shut off deteriorate faster. They keep the elevators functional when needed for taking maintenance equipment on."

"But it doesn't require a key or something to activate it?"

"Keys are overrated," he responded. The elevator opened, and he took her out for another walk of a few minutes, then reentered an elevator, either that one again or another. He definitely was trying to disorient her. Unfortunately, it was working. Anyone's sense of direction would have trouble following all this.

"What about power outages?" she asked as they took their sixth elevator ride.

"What about them?"

"If the power happened to go off when you were on the elevator, nobody would know you were stuck over here. It could be hours until rescue. Unless...is there anybody else here?"

He gave a cold, humorless laugh. "Wondering about ghosts and how many of us there are?"

She couldn't resist answering that comment. "So you're a ghost?" Her tone was dubious.

Another pause, and then he gave her the same answer he had when she had asked that first night if he was associated with the hospital. "In a way."

"Oh, come on. You're as real as I am." She reached over to touch his flesh just for emphasis. "But what would you do if you got trapped in an elevator with the power out? How would you get help?"

He shrugged, and she felt the motion through his guiding arm. "Help is overrated just like keys are."

"So you could get out yourself?"

"Either that or just stay there. Not like my schedule is too full anyway. I'm not going to miss an appointment or anything." The taste of bitterness was back in his tone.

"Is anybody else over here?" she asked again.

Once again, he dodged. "All sorts of us. Former doctors, former patients, spirits, poltergeists, phantoms. I even saw Elvis down the hall once."

She gave up for now on pursuing a straight answer. She was getting tired of being blindfolded, and he was simply getting tired. She could tell that this odyssey wasn't doing much for his bad leg. "If you're just trying to scramble my sense of direction, you've succeeded quite a while ago, so can we please just get to wherever we're going, Maestro?"

He chuckled. "Patience isn't your strong point, Cuddy."

"It hardly seems to be yours, either, from our conversations," she shot back.

"You do have spirit. That's what I've liked about you from the beginning. Also a mind, and you aren't afraid to use it." He led her out along a few more halls or rooms or whatever they were, and then he stopped. There was another click, and he guided her through a door. She heard it close behind her.

Then his hands were at her head once again, and the blindfold came off. "Welcome," he said.