The M.D. Meets His Match. Marie Ferrarella

could.

      Maybe it was because he’d been at loose ends ever since Melinda had canceled out on him, begging off from the cruise because of some personal emergency at home that now eluded his brain.

      The real emergency, he’d had no doubt at the time, was that she’d had marriage on her mind and he’d had nothing more serious than a pleasant interlude on his. It wasn’t that he had anything against marriage in general, just nothing for it in particular when it came to himself. He reasoned that he saw enough dying at the hospital, he didn’t need to be part of something that, no matter what, had a finite lifespan. His parents had driven that lesson home long before he’d ever put on his first pair of scrubs.

      But that belief in no way made him monastic. For him, relationships lasted as long as they were mutually beneficial, comforting and light. While he was involved, he could be counted on for emotional support, a kind word and to be summoned in the middle of the night in case of a breakdown—as long as he wasn’t on call. Even after a relationship had run its course, he usually remained on good terms with the woman. But he’d made it a rule never to meet the woman’s family or to discuss anything more romantically serious than pending plans for the weekend. He didn’t believe in committing himself to anything longer than that.