After the first chapter Im not sure if any one is reading this, so please review or PM me to let me know if I should keep posting.

thank you

J.

2. Enigma

I must admit, even though life in Keyes was very different to anything I had experienced before, I didn't have any trouble settling in. Dr Young (who insisted I call him Greg, but I was too used to working in the big hospitals to manage that just yet) gave me a tour around the hospital the next morning, and gave me my work roster.

Dr Young was a jolly old man. He reminded me of Santa Clause for some reason, just without the beard. His face was round and balding, and he wore these Harry Potter-esque glasses, always set halfway down his nose. And he was always smiling.

My work roster was quite busy, but I was happy with that. I wasn't sure what sort of past times Keyes offered, and seeming I tended to get bored easily, busy was good.

Monday and Tuesday I had clinic in the hospital from 8am till 5pm, with a one hour lunch break at 1pm. Wednesday I had outreach clinics at any one of the four Aboriginal communities around Keyes. Thursday I had clinics again, and Friday I had after hours on call at the hospital. Every second weekend I was to be on call as well.

Pretty much I would be spending all my time with Dr Young, as his timetable mirrored mine, except for Friday night on call. This was because Dr Young would be my supervisor for this year, because as an intern, I still needed someone to sign off all the work I do to make sure I didn't make a mistake.

Dr Monroe I would hardly see. He was always on night shift, so pretty much the only time I would be inflicted upon him was my Friday night on call.

I had to admit, I was a little disappointed, but then again, after Dr Monroe's exit at the barbeque, maybe it was good that I didn't have to inflict myself upon him.

The week went by smoothly. Dr Young was a great teacher, and I did get to do 99% of the work myself. In fact, quite often when I brought him a chart to check off on, he would sign without really looking at it. Whether this was because he trusted me or if it was because he was too busy to do otherwise, I didn't know. But I was fairly sure if he didn't trust my judgement, he would have checked more thoroughly.

Ruth really did fall into a motherly role with me. During working hours, she always said hi and asked how I was doing, and every night after work she would ask me over to her place for dinner, where she would regale me with stories about her life in Keyes. She lived with her son Darcy, who was nearly 16, but the only time I ever saw him was as soon as dinner was put down on the table, and he left as soon as it was finished. Ruth would always sigh and say he was going through a phase. I guess Keyes had more of a social scene than I thought.

I had the day off on Friday to prepare me for my night shift. I really didn't know what to do with myself, apart from sleep, but I thought that it would be best if I left that for the afternoon. So that morning I decided to go for a walk around town, something I hadn't really had a chance to do before now. So I slathered myself with sunscreen (my skin was too pale not to - I didn't tan, I burned), threw my unruly curls into a loose ponytail and put on a hat and sunglasses. I took slip-slop-slap very seriously.

Town was so small it didn't take me a long time to walk through it all. In fact, I managed to loop through it three times in an hour. I did stop in at the grocery shop to pick up some things for dinner, and some extra for Saturday when I would ask Ruth if she'd like to come over for dinner. I felt guilty being cooked for all the time. After I brought my groceries home and put them away, I decided that I wanted to go look at the ocean, so I revved up the old Land Cruiser I was provided with, and drove the five minutes to the cliffs.

When I got there, I was in awe with the beauty of it as I was on my first day, even now when the spectacular sunset was replaced with the vivid blue sky. You could look out across the ocean endlessly, and the way the cliffs dropped away made this feel like the edge of the world. It was beautiful.

I set up an old picnic blanket next to my car, and an old umbrella over that, and sat myself down to watch the world pass me by. I sighed, and after an hour or so, packed myself up and drove myself home. I would need to sleep if I was going to stay awake all night. From what I had heard, Friday nights in Keyes were never boring.

So it was at 6pm when I dragged myself over to Keyes Hospital to start my first night shift. The sun was setting, casting a red glow over everything, making the earth look like it was on fire. I didn't see Dr Monroe when I got in, so I asked Cassie, the nurse on call for the evening, if he was in yet. She told me he was, but even with that information I didn't manage to find him.

The first trauma for the evening came in around 7pm. A man had gotten into a fist fight with a tree (in other words, someone had beaten him up and he said that he had walked into a tree. A difficult concept when Keyes didn't have any trees over 4 feet tall). I went about cleaning the wound and stitching him up, knowing full well that I needed Dr Monroe to check him off before I was allowed to discharge him. I asked Cassie to find him when I was putting in the final suture. Next thing I knew, he was there.

He was even more beautiful under the buzzing fluorescent lights, they somehow made his skin even more translucent that I felt brown next to him. He had brushed his chocolate hair away from his eyes, which I could see today were a golden brown (how I ever thought he could have had black eyes like some kind of monster was beyond me), and the way his button-down short sleeve shirt pulled across his chest suggested that he was very toned beneath it.

Dr Monroe only examined my stitching for the barest of moments, so short I didn't even notice him take a breath, before he nodded at me, signed my chart and disappeared again.

I felt my heart sink. At the bonfire, Dr Monroe had chatted merrily to anyone that came near him - apart from me. Even now, while we were working together, he couldn't bring himself to say one word to me, to even be around me. What had I done wrong?

The rest of the night followed pretty much the same pattern. Someone came in, normally with an alcohol-related injury or illness (I had managed to dodge being vomited on three times already), I would fix them up as best I could, ask Cassie to find Dr Monroe for me, he would appear, sign my chart, and leave, normally without acknowledging me in the slightest. Occasionally, if he thought I'd missed something, he might spit out a word like "LFTs" before he disappeared, but not once did I get to see the smile he greeted other people with at the bonfire, to hear the flow of his English brogue, or get any insight at all into what kind of doctor he was. He always seemed painfully rigid around me.

I asked Cassie during our tea-break if he was okay. She looked at me, confused. He seemed as lovely as ever to her. I just sighed. So it was just me he gave the cold shoulder to.

Around midnight, the call came in that there was a car rollover just outside of town, three people were injured. Seeming there was no ambulance in Keyes, we would have to go out to it. My heart started beating more rapidly - my first road trauma. I thought we would travel there in the same car, but just before Dr Monroe got into his Range Rover, he spun to face me. We had never been this close to one another, and I could feel my breath hitch in my chest.

"Dr Snow, we will need more than one car to bring the casualties back."

Oh, so I was being ditched. Ok.

I don't know why this stung me like it did. It made sense that with three casualties, we would need more than one car to bring them back. It's not like we could squish them in like sardines, but still, it felt like it was an excuse to not be near me.

So I drove over to the crash site. I couldn't work out how they managed to roll the car here, the dirt road was perfectly straight, one of the better roads outside of Keyes. But there it was, the ute upturned on it's roof. I could see the local SES surrounding the vehicle, using the jaws of life to free the two moaning passengers inside. Dr Monroe was already looking after the man who was in the tray when the car rolled. He looked pretty bad, he was so pale that even Dr Monroe looked like he had colour. A SES worker was squeezing a bag of saline as Dr Monroe worked like a machine, trying to reduce the blood loss. He had removed his shirt to make a makeshift tourniquet, and there was blood splashed across his chest, like rubies scattered amongst diamonds.

I heard the screech of metal tearing, as finally another passenger was freed from the wreckage. Two SES guys pulled him out and dragged him over to me. He was yelling and holding his leg, where a metal bar was pierced through it. Did we have any tourniquets? I didn't want to remove my shirt like Dr Monroe did to stop the bleeding…

"In the bag," Dr Monroe shouted over the din.

I looked at the emergency bag that had suddenly appeared at my side (how did that get there?) and opened it up, finding a tourniquet in the side pocket (why had Dr Monroe ruined his shirt when a perfectly good tourniquet existed?), yanked it out a pulled it tight around the leg above where the metal bar was. My patient, a young man around my age, continued to shriek with pain, so I pulled morphine out of the bag and gave him an injection to calm him down. I inserted a drip in his arm, letting the saline replace the blood that was lost. I couldn't really do much else for him, I floundered, feeling useless.

This man needed a trauma centre, the nearest of which was in Broome, three hours away by light aircraft. If you considered the flight there and back, assuming they had already left, it would be six hours before he would be able to have his leg repaired. By then, it would be too late to save it.

"Move," Dr Monroe was by my side, still not meeting my eyes.

I moved to the side and allowed him to take my place by the leg.

"But your patient…"

"He's dead."

I looked over to where he came from, and saw the SES bloke who had been holding the bag of saline, pulling a sheet over what was his patient.

"Get me my bag from my car, Dr Snow."

I rushed over to his Range Rover, and yanked open the door, throwing myself into it, looking for his bag. I thought I found what I was looking for, and rushed back over.

In the short time I had been gone, the scene around my patient had changed. There was a blue tarp pulled underneath his leg, the red sand that caked the wound was being washed away as I looked at Dr Monroe, who had pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. As I placed the bag beside him, he motioned for me to do the same.

He worked without talking, incising the leg as my patient screamed in pain, dissecting around the pole as my patient was held down by three burly SES guys. Every now and then, his hand would flick out towards me, and I would place the instruments that I retrieved from his bag to him. I watched as he worked, completely at awe at how skilful his hands were, how calm he was in what could hardly be called a makeshift theatre. I was frozen as I watched him work to remove the metal pole. I don't think I could have moved if I wanted to.

"Dr Snow, some more morphine for your patient."

I shook my head clear. Of course - pain killers. I could hardly blame Dr Monroe for such a lapse in judgement, he had his hands full where he was. As I fumbled through the emergency bag to find something that would reduce the pain, I wished desperately for the anaesthetic tray at the hospital. What I wouldn't give to have something to knock him out with!

But I just had to make do with the morphine, there was no midazolam or anything else to put him to sleep with, which I inserted into his IV. I couldn't give him enough to stop his pain completely (it would probably also stop his breathing), but I could give him enough hopefully to make him more comfortable.

He worked for a few more minutes in silence, reaching out every now and then for me to hand him something else. The next thing I knew, he yanked the metal rod from the wound, as the patient shrieked in pain and I watched in horror, expecting blood to come spurting from the wound, which it didn't. He threw the rod aside, and started in on the wound again, sowing bits and pieces back together.

"You can go have a look at patient 3 now. I can manage from here," he grunted, sounding short of breath.

I hadn't noticed that his breathing should be laboured. In fact, it hadn't registered if he was breathing at all.

I stood myself up, careful that none of the dust I was caked with blew towards the wound, and walked over towards the final victim of this accident. He was in much better shape than the others - he had been the only one wearing a seatbelt, which was evidenced by the large purple bruises developing across his chest and stomach. He had a few small cuts and a broken arm, which I put in a backslab (the plaster would have to wait till we got back to the hospital to have it x-rayed), and I stitched the worst of his cuts under local anaesthetic.

My patient just sat there while I went to work, his eyes never leaving the covered shape that had been his friend. Tears rolled slowly down his cheeks, washing away the dirt caked to his face.

"It was just meant to be a bit of fun," he repeated to himself, over and over.

Although I could find it in my heart to feel sorry for this young man, at the same time I was starting to feel angry at his group. I had smelt the alcohol on the breath of the driver as I attempted to deal with his leg, just as I could smell it on my current patient. I could see now the tire tracks ground into the dirt road where he and his mates were trying to get the ute to do donuts. How could they have been so stupid? But my hands remained gentle as I pulled my needle back and forth through his skin. I don't think he needed my lecture to know they had done the wrong thing. The blue tarp pulled over his friend was more than enough evidence for that.

I looked out the window and could see the colour on the horizon start to change. It had been two hours since the RFDS plane had come and collected the driver with his leg, although I couldn't see why he needed to go to Broome. Dr Monroe had re-established blood flow and his leg appeared to be almost as good as new - I had seen worse operation outcomes at the RAH, with their world class facilities, when compared to what Dr Monroe had managed to do at the side of a dirt road on a blue tarp.

Dr Monroe had gone back to his no-talking policy as soon as our patient had been flown out. He did watch me, however, x-ray and plaster the passenger's arm, signing off my chart so he could be admitted for observation overnight. He did say one last thing to me, as he signed the chart:

"Revise your primary survey for next time. Remember: airways, breathing, circulation. You… did well… for a first timer."

I sighed and wondered if the enigma of Dr Monroe's dislike for me would ever be revealed as I packed up my stuff and readied myself to go home. I didn't even bother to search out Dr Monroe to say goodbye - inevitably he would currently be behaving like a ghost, as he always did as I looked for him. What a strange, intriguing man. I was too tired to ponder his disposition anymore, collapsing on my couch as soon as I walked through the

door, not having enough energy to carry myself to my bed.

That was the first time I dreamt of Dr Monroe.

I was standing in the centre of a dirt road that could have been anywhere, stretching off in a straight line as far as the eye could see, the horizon on all sides of me unbroken, not even by a single piece of scrub. I was watching the horizon for something, something I knew I couldn't see. I could feel the wind swirling around me, making the white dress I was for some reason wearing (I hated dresses), swirl around me like I was Marilyn Monroe. My blonde ringlets blew in the wind (why was my hair down?). Suddenly, he was in front of me, his chest bare except splattered with what I knew to be blood. Rubies and diamonds. His eyes were dark and dangerous, black, like the night at the bonfire. His hair did not blow in the wind, it had ceased as abruptly as his arrival.

He just stared at me, not breathing. I felt like touching his chest, whether to feel the toned muscles that rippled before me, or to see if my clinical assumption about his breathing was accurate. But I just stood there, staring back at him.

"What are you doing here, Kaia, it's not safe." his gorgeous accent made me melt.

"How could I not be here when that is where you are?"

"Because it's where I am is the exact reason why you should not."

What a confusing conversation! Who talked like this in real life? I must be dreaming.

I reached out my hand towards him, desperate to touch his skin.

He took a step back and sighed.

"Even the most beautiful flowers have thorns."

And then he disappeared.

I awoke abruptly, the sun shining in through my window. I was sprawled across my bed (how did I get here?), my sheets strewn across my floor. I had evidently discarded them at some point, the weather hot enough that they would only hinder my comfort.

I groaned - I had never been a morning person - and rolled over to look at my clock. It was already past lunch time. I was amazed I wasn't hungry. I sat up and saw myself in the mirror, my mess of golden ringlets strewn around my head, evidently having come out of the ponytail I had held them in last night. My clothes were smeared with dirt and blood. They would need a good soak…as would my bedding, as I had slept there in this mess all night.

After I put my laundry on, I had a shower, then sat down to eat my breakfast, hoping that it would be the final key to making me feel human again. As I stared grumpily at my Weet-bix, I pondered my dream. Why was I dreaming about Oliver Monroe? And why was it so cryptic? Was I attracted to him because of his undeniable beauty, or was it because I was intrigued by his behaviour around me? I couldn't see why his dislike of me bothered me so much. Plenty of people disliked me - they were always jealous how everything seemed to come easy to me. But Oliver (somehow my dream had changed him from Dr Monroe to Oliver in my mind) was easily as smart as me, probably even smarter. His skill as a surgeon last night was more than evidence to that. He had

no reason to feel jealous of me, I was in awe of him.

Maybe it was my obvious awe of him that was putting him off. I had thought I had managed to compose myself around him, but maybe he was exceptionally observant. Maybe he had seen that I was developing a crush on him, and, trying to be a gentleman, he was establishing space between us so my infatuation would not develop further. But was I developing a crush on Oliver? I didn't think so. Even though he was (without understating things) the most beautiful man I had ever seen, obviously the most intelligent and had a great accent (I was a sucker for accents), I didn't think that I thought of him in anyway other than a colleague. I mean, the man annoyed me sometimes with his aloofness that he seemed to reserve solely for me. But then again, I was dreaming about him, but was anything in that dream sexually charged? All I remembered was how confusing it was. Flowers with thorns?

Perhaps that was the reason I dreamed about him. I was confused about Oliver Monroe. I had never liked not understanding something, so maybe the dream was just my subconscious trying to work things out. If that was the case, it had failed miserably. I was even more confused now then I was before.

Once I washed up my dishes and put my clothes and sheets in the dryer (you couldn't hang things on the line out here or they would end up messier than before), I went over to Ruth's house. I was hoping she could distract me from my dream - Ruth was always good for gossip.

I guess that was one of the good things about small towns - doors were always open, so I entered her house without knocking. It was too hot to stay outside for long - I would end up looking like a lobster.

"Kaia!" She greeted me warmly, walking up to hug me, as was becoming standard for us, "I can't believe you're out of bed already! From what I heard you had a busy first night."

"Oh, it wasn't too bad. Oliver got stuck with the hardest work. I just got to sit beside him and hand him things mostly."

"That's not what I heard from Oliver, he said you had a natural talent for these things…" I lost concentration in her rambling discussion about the miner boys who were involved in the accident, distracted by what she had said. Oliver Monroe had complimented me? Without prompting?

"Wait, when did you speak to Oliver?"

"Oh, he rang me up shortly after your shift ended. He wanted me to come and check on you later today. Thought you'd be exhausted and sleep for the next week."

So he was not only complimenting me but looking after my wellbeing? What was with this man?

"I should have told him not to worry. I mean, look at you, you're awake before Darcy is and he doesn't have the excuse of being up all night at a road accident. That was pretty bad luck scoring that one on your first night shift, but then again, it was lucky for Oliver you were on. I'm not sure he would have managed as well on his own…"

I zoned out Ruth's rambling again, deep in thought. Did this mean Oliver didn't hate me, as I always felt whilst he was around? So why did he avoid me? These thoughts frustrated me - I was here to be distracted and I was failing miserably.

"Ruth, why is Oliver out here anyway? I mean, he's a brilliant surgeon, shouldn't he be working in a larger hospital?"

"Oh. I guess he's a bit like you. You know, a child prodigy. Trained at Oxford over in England, graduated when he was eighteen, trained as a surgeon in London. Next thing I know, two years ago I get a letter from this 21 year old boy asking if he could come work out here. I was floored by his qualifications. I thought it was a hoax, so I went to talk to Greg about it. He was a little confused about why he would want to come out to here from England of all places, wondered if he'd be able to settle in, but Greg was right, if it was real, we would have been mad to pass up such skills. Next thing I knew Oliver rocked up here and settled into life in Keyes like he had always been here. He doesn't have a contract, he works on the Medicare rebate alone. Bulk bills all his patients too. Tells me he doesn't need to worry about money, that he was left heaps of it by his parents. Says he enjoys helping the community out here too much to leave."

My mind was floored. Oliver was only 23 and he was that talented? Mark was 23...he would be so envious of Oliver he probably would turn green. And he just randomly decided to come out here from England? But why? And he studied at Oxford…none of this made sense why thing boy genius would decide to leave being a surgeon in London to work the night shift in Keyes, Western Australia. Who was this man?

Review and let me know your reading. J.