A/N: Sorry for the long delay, but things have been crazy. I'm working seven days a week with my two jobs, plus interfacing with the publisher on Mom's book, as well as some major family happenings recently. This is exactly why I won't give a timetable or number of remaining chapters prediction on this story, though I do think we're over halfway. It will be finished as time allows, but I promise, it WILL be finished.

Welcome to a couple of new readers who have found my series recently. I can't send a reply to guest reviews, but I'm glad to know there are still people out there finding it. There will be more stories in the series soon as Phantom is done. Next up is called The Other Foot and has both a Cuddy plotline and a, drum roll, Stacy plotline. Those are two separate plotlines, but they do, of course, intersect at times. Patience is a virtue, as Mom always said. It was a virtue she didn't have, and I don't have much myself, so I do understand the anticipation wearing a little. :)

Enjoy more of Phantom. I will say that I have half-vacation (off of one job, not the other) first week of August for my birthday, so I am likely to have more time then for writing than I have lately.

Meanwhile, back at PPTH, Cuddy had just read the old newspaper records on the murder case where House's landlord was killed, and he was a suspect and fled.

(H/C)

The next day, Saturday, Cuddy slunk into PPTH, looking around surreptitiously. Nobody paid her much attention; staff was lower on weekends, and those there were involved fully in their jobs as, in the ebb and flow of hospital weekend traffic, this was apparently a flow weekend. Never was there a happy medium in the medical world; any hospital on weekends was either frantically busy or had on-duty doctors sitting around bored.

Cuddy wound up in the archives, the old files down in the basement dating back to a time when hard-copy charts were still the rule, not the exception. The big, vault-like room was empty, as she had anticipated. She looked up Gregory House on the computer, found his chart number, and retrieved the file. It was impressively thick.

Taking it to a table that was out of sight but within earshot of the door, she sat down. Her mind balked for just a moment, paying token tribute to the fact that she was about to violate HIPAA and would be fired on the spot if caught. The hesitation was brief. Part of her couldn't believe she was actually about to do this, but the larger part had to have some answers.

She opened the file and looked at his face sheet. The next of kin was listed as a Stacy Warner, also noting that she held POA. Correction, she had held POA. This was crossed out and marked "revoked" in bright red ink.

Under family contacts, his mother was listed but not his father. His mother, who had died in another state early on the day of his landlord's murder. Why hadn't he listed both of them? Possible clue there to his mysterious background. Cuddy carefully copied the address and phone number for Blythe House. She might try to track down House's father and see if he was still living.

The face sheet gave her little more info. Employer was listed as PPTH. House's age was about where she had pegged it, though he looked strained and borderline ill now as the Maestro. Small wonder, given medical problems plus the stress of the murder case hanging over his head all these years.

Why hadn't he fought that setup if he was innocent? And he had to be innocent. She simply couldn't imagine him committing that crime.

She started reading the medical records of the chart next. There was only one earlier record before the major hospitalization. House had had pneumonia once, treated with antibiotics routinely, and had gotten better.

The first ER report related to the infarction had her clenching her fists on the edge of the chart, punishing the innocent paperwork. House had presented with leg pain, unilateral, abrupt onset. He had been playing golf and had been struck down suddenly, he said, had nearly fallen over. The line in the ER had been long that day, and in spite of his stated pain levels at triage assessment, it was a few hours before he made it to being seen by a physician. When the doctor came in at last, he was taking a history, and House kept complaining about the pain and the delay. The ER doc knew House, and reading between the lines, Cuddy deduced that he didn't like him much. He probably hadn't been taking this too seriously. No ultrasound, not even a check for peripheral pulses. When the doctor finally had opened the drawer of the cart with pain meds, House had seized a needle and injected himself. That quickly, he was marked as a drug seeker, thus guaranteeing that any return ER visits would be suspect.

The final diagnosis on the ER report made the doctor's skepticism perfectly clear. #1, drug-seeking behavior. #2, right leg pain, strongly suspect psychosomatic.

With that documentation, the first domino in the chain to disaster had been given a push. Cuddy realized that she was actually tearing the ER report slightly in her grip, and she made herself relax her fingers enough to turn the page.

House had returned the next day, saying that the leg pain was back full force after the meds had worn off, and furthermore, his urine was dark. The ER doctor, a different one this time, carefully summarized his colleague's report from the day before and dismissed House with a prescription for antibiotics for a UTI. He refused to give any further pain meds. He documented House's vehement protest to this, phrasing that reaction in all the language that would clue any fellow doctor into his disbelief. Diagnosis was UTI and again, drug-seeking behavior. Once more, no diagnostics on the leg.

The next day, House was back, brought in this time by his girlfriend, Stacy Warner. A third ER physician drew the case. Her backing up House's story of severe pain carried a little bit more weight, but House's condition told its own tale by this point. He was diaphoretic, vitals all wildly abnormal, and he was slipping at times into borderline non responsiveness. Stacy insisted on an evaluation, and this doctor finally was willing to comply. He drew basic lab work, and the kidney functions were screwed up enough that House was admitted to the ICU on the spot.

From there, it was a progressive disaster. A scan of the leg finally revealed the clot, but it was too late with muscle death already apparent. The nephrotic injury was already severe, as well. If the clot were removed, the full backwash of necrotic waste trapped behind it would throw him into full renal failure. If it weren't removed, the pain would kill him. The doctor recommended amputation, and Cuddy found herself nodding sadly as she read. A few days earlier, there might have been alternatives, but by this point, with this scan and lab work, she had to agree with that medical recommendation.

Unfortunately, House didn't. He dug in with all the stubbornness she had seen him show as the Maestro, resisting appeals from Stacy and from multiple doctors. He even had a heart attack from the pain and stress to his system. Finally admitting he couldn't take the pain, he asked to be put into an induced coma to ride it out. As soon as he had been asleep, Stacy had used the POA to authorize a middle-of-the-road debridement surgery.

The op report had Cuddy's fingers punishing the innocent paper again, this time in sympathy more than anger. There was no question it had been necessary; most of his quad had already been dead. Still, this surgery had been a guaranteed lifetime sentence to pain, simply assisting in providing the lifetime in which to feel it.

House revoked the POA the same day he woke up after the surgery. From there, the record showed a painful course both physically and mentally. House was lashing out, angry at the staff, angry at Stacy most of all. To Cuddy's surprise, the one move that struck her as the most obvious was the one thing he hadn't done. He never filed a lawsuit for malpractice against PPTH. He could have won it easily; those ER reports showed clear negligence. Still, not even the threat of legal action was made.

She shook her head. Add that one alongside his running after the murder and making no stand in his own defense. The man was inexplicable at times.

He had made some progress in rehab and PT after the surgery, though it was apparent that full function was never going to return, nor full relief of pain. He had a very difficult course trying to find a pain med, insisting on his mind being clear. The drugs which worked made him fuzzy, per his report; the ones which didn't weren't strong enough. He tried several different combinations, settling on Vicodin a month before the murder. That seemed to work best so far, and there were even mentions a few times of his desire to resume work soon.

Then came the last day, that last PT appointment. Cuddy read the note four times over. It had been routine in every way for his new painful reality. No mention of extra tension beyond what he always showed. He apparently didn't know about his mother's death yet; it wasn't mentioned, at least, and he was his usual self.

There was simply no way that he had committed a murder before that appointment. No, he had been set up.

Why? By whom? She wrote down the names of the first two ER doctors, who had dismissed House's complaint without even investigating it. That first one especially had mentioned that he knew House. Of course, the Maestro quite possibly had offended colleagues right and left with his brilliant mind and impatience with slower ones, and she couldn't guarantee that a murder-worthy grudge didn't exist elsewhere or even here, but maybe it was a starting point.

Finally closing the chart, she carefully refiled it, then slipped back out of the archives. Not a soul had seen her.

She needed to get home and get ready for her date with Wilson, but her footsteps led her inexorably to the roof. "Maestro," she called softly. "Maestro!"

The reply came just as she was about to give up. "What are you doing here? You're off today."

The voice apparently originated over by the stairwell, but she turned and walked straight to that gate. After a moment, she could see him, standing well back, surrounded in shadows. "I just came in to...check on a patient."

"You're lying, Cuddy. You need to improve at it; they ought to teach a class on that in med school. It will be a very handy skill in your profession."

"That wasn't a lie," she insisted. Technically, the statement was true.

He stepped forward, cocking his head slightly, fixing her with the laser intensity of his eyes. She would swear that the man could see straight through her at times, reading her thoughts as easily as a lab report. "What was the name of the patient you were checking on?" he demanded abruptly.

"It...I'm not supposed to tell you that."

"Now, after all our conversations, you're going to claim HIPAA on me? Never mind. I could probably guess who; I just can't guess how you found the name."

She sighed. He was ahead of her; he always had been and always would be. "Do you remember Dr. Nordstrom?" His expression softened a little, his eyes going distant. "He remembers you. He substituted on rounds in the last part of this week, and he mentioned you. He said to me privately that I reminded him of you - although he did say that you were better. You were a natural; I have to work at it."

"Good old Nordy," he said. His features hardened. "So of course, once you had a name, you looked up the chart. You know you could get fired for that?"

"Yes," she said. She pressed up against the gate, though he was still several feet beyond it on his side. "Maybe I could get you some of those heat patches regularly. I wish I could get you Vicodin somehow, but they keep it secured too carefully. House..."

He flinched. "I told you, my name is Maestro."

"No, you didn't actually. You just said to call you that." She sighed, wondering how to possibly approach the rest of this landmine of a subject.

"Since you haven't asked why I've hidden out over here in pain for ten years, I'll assume you've filled in the rest of the story. I doubt Nordy would have told you that, but with the name, you could find an old story still on the internet. Did you go down to the newspaper archives?"

"Yes," she admitted. "Maestro, you were set up. You got framed."

"Of course," he admitted.

The quick response caught her off guard, and she fumbled for a minute over her reply. "But why not fight it, then?"

He backed up a step, right on the edge of going out of her sight. "Wait!" she implored him. "Maestro, we can dig to the bottom of this. I'll help you."

He shook his head. "Write this down in granite, Cuddy. I don't want your help."

"But you're innocent," she insisted.

He shook his head. "I didn't murder that jerk of a landlord."

"That's what I said. You're innocent."

"Cuddy, drop it. Don't dig up the past; nothing can be changed that matters anyway." He looked at the sky overhead, apparently gauging the time. "You need to go get ready. You have a date with Dr. Wilson tonight, don't you?"

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"I see and hear things. More than you know. Goodbye, Cuddy."

The word chilled her. "You mean goodbye goodbye? That's it? But I need you on cases. You're teaching me."

He sighed. "I'm teaching you a little too well, apparently. If you have a really good differential, let me know, but regarding my personal life, forget it. I don't want to be exonerated. I just want to be left alone." He vanished into the darkness, leaving her standing there stunned, trying to force that conversation into any kind of sense.

He didn't think he was innocent. He had definitely shaken his head in the negative at that line from her. Yet he admitted that he hadn't committed the murder. What then was he in his eyes guilty of, and how could it possibly be worth this much punishment?

It was a long time before she turned away from the gate, but she knew as she headed for the door that she had no intentions of letting the murder case drop. No, she was going to help him whether he wanted it or not.