a/n: This idea came from a conversation I had with sidekick55. And in gratitude, this is where I plug her ff's, Canon and Grace Note. They rock. No, really, they do. And if you haven't read them already, you really, truly should.

My muse, sidekick55, is also my beta. So you should thank her. In fact, thank her by reading Canon and Grace Note. And if you don't like this at all, then don't blame her. She's still brilliant and it's not her fault. Blame me. And then go and read her ff, because your life will be better for it. Maybe I'm biased. Probably I am. But once you've seen the brilliance of her original characters, well...just trust me...even though you don't know me...'kay?

Plug over.

Chapter 1 – Red Skittles

Rosalie appraised her reflection in the mirror through a rainbow scribbling of marker. She turned her head slightly to the left to avoid a particularly large purple smudge and ran a pink fingernail across the bottom of her full lips, making sure her lipstick was in place.

It was Monday, the beginning of what would undoubtedly be a very long week. Not that long weeks were unusual at Sunny Mountain Mental Hospital. In fact, a short week at Sunny Mountain was about as ridiculous a thought as the name SunnyMountain. The hospital was located in Forks, Washington, a small town in the Pacific Northwest that was continuously assaulted by rain and clouds, making for an incredibly dreary atmosphere outside Sunny Mountain and a considerably creepy atmosphere within.

Pleased with her appearance, Rosalie shook her wavy golden hair and headed out of the bathroom door down the pale green corridors to the nurses station, where an unfamiliar face was waiting for her. She took a moment to appraise the timid, mousey girl before moving behind the counter.

"Can I help you?" Rosalie's disinterested voice ricocheted down the quiet corridor.

"Hi. I'm Angela, the new nurse." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Right, right. Dr. Whitlock told me to expect you. Well, you can't work in that." Rosalie gestured to Angela's outfit that was about as non-descript as the girl. "I'll take you to the locker rooms and get you some scrubs and then give you a rundown of the patients." She moved from behind the counter and led Angela down the hallway.

Rosalie could tell from Angela's timid nature that she wouldn't last longer than a month, so she didn't concern herself with small talk. The turnover at Sunny Mountain was high, most nurses not lasting any longer than two months. Rosalie had been there for just over a year, longer than most of the staff.

Upon entering the locker room, Angela and Rosalie were greeted by broad, bare shoulders and a well muscled back. Emmett, the orderly, turned around to greet them. His dimples gave his face a youthful charm, but the gleam in his eyes revealed an impish nature.

"Rose," he said simply. It was only her name, but the tone of his voice sent a shiver down Rosalie's spine and a blush in Angela's cheeks.

"Don't," Rose said.

"Don't what?" And again, though his facial expression implied innocence, he was clearly flirting.

"Don't call me Rose."

"Alice gets to call you Rose." He mock pouted, referring to his sister, her best friend.

"Yes, but see, I like Alice."

Emmett's laugh filled the small locker room as he pulled on his shirt, not phased by Rosalie's snobbery. In fact, Emmett enjoyed it. It was too much fun to toy with her. He knew very well that she liked him.

Rosalie found Emmett overbearingly attractive. She would never admit, however, how much she liked him. How much she liked the game they played. How much those dimples made her weak at the knees every time he smiled at her. And he always had a smile for Rose.

But she was engaged. If she hadn't been, and if her sister, Bella, didn't depend on her…

But she was, and Bella did.

"So, who do we have here?" Emmett turned his attention to Angela who had moved to stand almost completely behind Rosalie.

"This is Angela, the new nurse. Angela, this is Emmett. He's an orderly."

He took two steps over to Angela and enveloped her in a hug. Personal space wasn't a concept Emmett was familiar with.

"Welcome to Sunny Mountain," he said as he let her go, her feet plopping lightly back to the laminate floors.

As if on cue, somewhere down the hall, a shrill scream broke up the welcome party.

"Guess that's me. I'll catch you later Angela." He winked at her, sending another flourish of red to her cheeks. "Rosalie." They locked eyes as he walked out the door. He flashed the crooked, dimpled smile he knew she liked best.

Regaining her composure, Rosalie moved towards her locker. "Emmett's harmless…mostly. So are the other orderlies, Eric and Mike. Word of advice though, if any of them ask you to help them find something in the storage closet, tell them to find it themselves." Rosalie pulled an old pair of blue scrubs and handed them to Angela. "When you're done, meet me back at the nurse's station."

She left Angela alone to change and went to grab the patient charts. As she sat waiting, Alice walked down the hallway rolling a large basket behind her filled with paint, construction paper, and other craft supplies. Alice was a volunteer activity coordinator at Sunny Mountain.

"Hey Rose!" Alice greeted with a smile. Her short dark hair was in disarray around her head and her calico patchwork dress was dotted with bits of paint and plaster.

Alice and Emmett were alike in many ways, from their crystal blue eyes to their congenial personalities. Where they differed however, was in stature: where Emmett looked like one of Zeus' love children, Alice looked like she had flown directly off of Peter Pan's shoulder.

Following absently behind Alice was Dr. Jasper Whitlock, his head lost in a textbook. Most of the staff was overworked and underpaid, but none more so than the Doctor himself. He was frequently too preoccupied to notice things going on around him, and as such, hadn't noticed that Alice paused at the nurse's station to talk to Rosalie.

Luckily, Alice's Tinkerbelle-like stature managed to save her from getting smashed in the head by the oversized textbook as Dr. Whitlock stumbled into her. The book thumped loudly to the floor, resulting in another blood curdling scream from one of the patients down the hall.

"Oh, Alice. So sorry," Dr. Whitlock apologized, bending over to pick the book back up. He had lived in Forks for the last five years, but had managed to retain a touch of his Texan drawl. "Are you alright?"

Alice beamed up adoringly at him. "Of course, Doctor."

It was no secret that one of the primary reasons Alice maintained her volunteer job at Sunny Mountain was her long-standing crush on Dr. Whitlock. As obvious as it was to the staff, and even some of the patients, Dr. Whitlock hadn't a clue.

Without looking back, he carried on down the hall, his nose back in the book with Alice staring longingly at his retreating figure.

Rosalie sighed. "When are you going to ask him out?"

Alice turned back around to face Rosalie, still radiant from the interaction. "I'm working up to it."

"You've been working up to it for the past six months. Seriously. You're obviously going to have to make the first move. You just need to come in here one day, in you best outfit, and by best outfit I mean one not splattered with paint or clay, and drag him into the storage closet with you."

"That's more your style than mine, Rose. Don't worry, I'm just waiting for the right moment. I'll know when it's time."

"Alright, well keep the storage closet in mind if you find that waiting for the right moment is taking too long. Trust me when I say that there's never a wrong moment for the storage closet."

"You have been spending entirely too much time with my brother." Alice retorted. "Speaking of closets and places people belong - how's the fiancé?"

Rosalie shrugged, indifferent. "Royce is fine."

It was Alice's turn to sigh. "Are you really going to go through with it?"

Alice knew very well that Rose didn't love Royce and was only marrying him for his money. But she also knew that without him, Rose would have no way to care for Bella. As far as Alice was concerned, his only redeeming factor was that he paid for Bella's stay at Sunny Mountain.

Royce always came across moderately agreeable, but being a car salesman, there was a slimy undertone that Alice didn't trust. She figured he knew Rose didn't love him either, and that he was okay with it so long as he got a trophy wife. To Royce, appearances were everything, and there was no woman, dead or alive, more beautiful than Rose.

Before she could answer the uncomfortable question, Angela appeared at the station. Rosalie managed to suppress a sigh of relief and made the introductions. "Alice, this is Angela. Alice is our volunteer activity coordinator."

"Nice to meet you." Alice smiled and shook Angela's hand. "Well, I better get set up. I'll talk to you later." Alice looked at Rose pointedly, letting her know that she wouldn't forget that her question went unanswered.

Rose grabbed an armful of patient charts from the desk. "Well, let's get you introduced."

By now the orderlies had moved most of the patients into the common room, so she decided to start there. It was the size of a large ballroom with windows overlooking the cloud covered mountains - was beautiful, but not particularly cheery.

The walls here also had the same rainbow scribbled treatment as the mirrors in the bathroom, though just last week it had been bright yellow sunflower wallpaper. They were still trying to find a painter willing to come in. The last one had been scared off when Carlisle, one of the patients who believed he was a doctor, tried to get him into a straight jacket and admit him into the hospital.

As Rose approached she sighed and rolled her eyes; the common room was sheer pandemonium.

Emmett was trying to wrestle a pair of scissors away from Lauren Mallory without hurting her. She had already sheared off half of her light blonde hair and most of it lay on the floor surrounding her chair where a patient had taken to braiding the fallen pieces.

Jessica Stanley, another patient, had her lips puckered, eyes closed, and arms wrapped in a vice hold around Mike's neck, ready to lay one on him. Each of his arms gripped her shoulders, pushing her as far away as possible.

And then there was Eric chasing Billy Black. Mr. Black believed himself to be an Indian Chief, and at this moment, was racing around the room in his wheel chair yelling and clapping his hand on his mouth over and over.

As he sped by Angela, whose jaw had just about dropped to the floor and looked as if she was ready to sprint for the exit, Eric came running by and slid to a stop in front of them.

Breathing heavily, he smiled appreciatively at Angela. "Who's the new girl?"

"Why don't you worry about that later, Yorkie?" Rose glared. "You have an Indian Chief to catch before he takes someone out."

Rose put her fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly. Immediately, all attention was on her.

Lauren's grip on the scissors loosened and Emmett was able to pry them away; Jessica dropped her hands and glared at Rosalie, having been stopped in, what was to her, a "heated make-out session" with Mike; and Billy, recognizing a power of authority matching his own, put the breaks on. Unfortunately, Eric didn't notice Billy's hand moving to stop the chair, and he crashed into him, flipping over the front and onto his back with a grimace of pain.

"Alright people, just because you're crazy doesn't mean you get to act like lunatics. Let's show Angela just how civilized you can be, okay?"

Angela was surprised by Rose's frankness in addressing the patients as crazy. Most nurses she had come across showed a little more sensitivity. However, there was no malice or resentment in Rose's tone; it was just a statement of fact that almost bordered on a term of endearment.

As much as Rose had become family to them, they had also become an extended, if not quirky, family to her. She knew the patients nearly as well as Dr. Whitlock, and had a strong sense of where their boundaries lay. Crazy as the patients may have been, they knew who they could and could not take advantage of.

Carlisle walked over to Rose's side, clutching a My Little Pony coloring book much like she was holding the patient charts.

"Nurse Rose is quite right," he announced to the room, and then turned to Rose and Angela, "Would you like to introduce me to the new nurse before we make our rounds?"

Rose had a soft spot for the mock doctor and frequently let him join her. Mostly, he stood back and observed, occasionally tearing a page out of a magazine or coloring book, prescribing skittles to patients.

"Certainly Dr. Cullen. I'd like you to meet Angela. Angela, this is Doctor Carlisle Cullen." She turned to Angela, whispering into her ear. "Carlisle doesn't realize he's not a doctor, but he doesn't get in the way."

So the two nurses and mock doctor made their way around the room, Rose making introductions to the patients and Angela muttering a quiet hello.

After they had completed the circuit in the common room, they moved on to the private rooms down the hallway where the more reclusive patients stayed. Esme Platt, a patient with a particularly severe case of OCD, refused to leave her room. Considering the state of the common room, Rose could hardly blame her.

After knocking on the door, in what appeared to Angela to be a completely random pattern, Rose opened and shut it four times before entering. This was the only way that Esme allowed guests in her room.

"Well, good morning, Esme." Rosalie walked into the room four steps and stopped.

Esme was sitting on the edge of a chair, back perfectly straight. To Angela, she looked like a diagram straight out of Emily Post. Rose knew that it was just part of her morning routine.

"Rosalie, Carlisle. So nice to see you both," Esme greeted. "Please, do come in. Who is your friend?"

Rosalie took a moment before answering. "Esme, this is Angela, our new nurse. This is her first day here with us."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Angela smiled, unsure how someone so pleasant had become a patient at Sunny Mountain.

Unfortunately, she had spoke in an uneven number of syllables and was about to find out.

Esme's eyes grew wide, her pale skin turning a chalky white before flushing a dark crimson red as she held her breath. Simultaneously, she began to hum a bar of Stars and Stripes Forever.

Rose took two steps back towards Angela, whispering low enough to where Esme couldn't hear. "You have to speak an even number of syllables. Say it again, but add another syllable somewhere."

As she spoke to Angela, Esme's face had turned from red to plum and her hand was gripping a section of her caramel colored hair. Carlisle stood to the side, scribbling swiftly with his fuchsia crayon over a prancing pony.

"I'm sorry. It's a great pleasure to meet you, Esme." Angela corrected herself, taking her time to count the syllables out in her head.

Esme instantly calmed, and her face began to return to a normal shade. "Not to worry." She said with a forced smile after completing a final bar of Stars and Stripes Forever.

Carlisle took that moment to hand over a prescription to Esme. He was the only person in the hospital, patient, staff or otherwise, she would accept things from directly. They had forged some inexplicable bond in their brief moments together.

Rose knew Esme kept every prescription he'd ever given her in a small box next to her bed. She also knew that each time, he prescribed her the same thing. Red skittles.

Rose had always been curious as to his reasoning behind it since she knew that the other patients received prescriptions for yellow, orange and occasionally purple skittles, but never red; however, she felt it might be a little too intrusive to ask.

"Thank you Carlisle. That's so kind of you." Esme smiled up at him, glowing with warmth, and grabbed the torn piece of paper from him letting her fingers mingle with his for just a fraction of a second.

"We'll be leaving. Thank you for having us." Rose smiled and ushered Carlisle and Angela out of the room.

"I'm so sorry," Angela gushed as soon as the door was closed.

"No, it's not your fault. I should have warned you before hand. Just remember to do everything evenly in the future and you should be okay. I think for now though, you better let me or the orderlies attend to her."

***

Rose felt she had grossly over-estimated Angela's lasting a month after her reaction with Esme, so she let her take a brief break before continuing their rounds. Carlisle had gone off to supervise activity time with Alice.

In the common room, the boys were gathered in front of the TV watching sports recaps on ESPN. Rose stood in the doorway quietly for a moment, listening to them talk. They were making bets on how long Angela would last.

"I think she'll make it through the day and be a no show tomorrow," Mike said.

"I hope she makes it a little longer than that. It's nice having some fresh meat around here." Rose couldn't see Eric's face, but she knew that he was most likely wagging his eyebrows or making some other crude expression.

Emmett and Mike both laughed, and Rose interrupted before giving Emmett a chance to make his bet.

"Don't you boys have something you should be doing other than watching SportsCenter and making bets?"

The three turned around, but only Mike and Eric had the decency to look guilty. Emmett stood there smiling at Rose as the other two scurried out of the room to go look after the patients.

"Aw, come on Rose. You know she's not going to last the week as well as I do," Emmett said, moving towards the door.

"Whether she does or not is neither here nor there." Rose stood with her hands on her hips. "And I told you not to call me that."

"You're cute when you're angry." Emmett said.

"Is it really necessary for you to push my buttons?"

He shrugged, smiling. "I like getting you all riled up. It's like teasing an irritable grizzly just after hibernation – dangerous, but exhilarating. Plus, when you get mad, you pout your lips in the cutest way. It's not my fault you make it so enjoyable for me."

Rose was getting more annoyed by the moment and was having difficulty not pursing her lips. "Oh, I'll show you enjoyable," she vowed, her voice purring over the words. She spun on her heel and began to move out of the room.

"You're right," Emmett called after her chuckling. "That view is enjoyable."

Rose paused mid-stride and spun back around. She stomped towards Emmett until they were nearly toe-to-toe. "Do not. Objectify me. Emmett McCarty." She said as her finger jabbed at his hard chest.

In that moment, the mixture of Rose's proximity and the fire in her eyes changed Emmett's mocking smile to something else entirely. He looked down at the infuriated Rose who, against her will, was pouting her lips.

"There it is," he murmured, and with his index finger he gently traced the bottom lip, just as she had done that morning in the mirror, but with far more tenderness and passion.

Rose, who had already been breathing heavily from anger, breathed deeply inward, unsure of what to do. She knew what she wanted, but she also knew that she shouldn't want it.

Emmett's eyes were hooded as he moved one hand to cup her jaw and another to brush the golden locks away from her face. His breath began to match hers, and he could feel her pulse racing to match his.

Just as Rose turned her face up towards his and their noses brushed, someone cleared their throat in the hallway.

Startled, Rose pushed at Emmett's chest, breaking whatever spell had been cast over the pair only seconds before. She turned around to meet Alice's "I told you so" face and a surprised Angela.

Emmett's hands had dropped back down to his sides, but his eyes sparked with impending victory.

Rose moved swiftly out of the room, brushing past Alice with a look that said, "don't say a word."

"Angela, are you ready?" Rose called.

Angela spun around, confused as to what she had just witnessed and hurried after Rose who had already made it halfway down the hall.

"Well aren't you just the cat standing over the spilled milk." Alice smiled, walking up to Emmett.

He shrugged and threw an arm over his sister's shoulders. "A gentleman never tells." He grinned with an impish gleam.

"You are anything but a gentleman." Alice laughed, but then got serious. "Listen, Emmett. I don't care that you're my brother. Rosalie is my best friend, and she's got a lot to deal with in her life already. If you hurt her, I will make your life hell."

If anyone knew how to make his life miserable, it would be Alice. And so, with just as serious a tone, he said, "I just want to make her happy."

End a/n: Leave me some red skittles like Elliott leaves E.T. Reese's Pieces.