Like a surreal home movie, images of Dr. Mark Greene's life flashed across the screen as the "ER" doctor lay on an operating table undergoing brain cancer surgery.
Greene's fictional life has become so familiar to millions of people over the past seven years that it was a jolt to consider the possibility of it ending.
Anthony Edwards, the actor who portrays Greene, plans to leave the medical drama when his contract ends next year.
Bloody patients will keep bursting through the doors of County General Hospital, but the emergency room will be different -- much more so than when actors George Clooney, Sherry Stringfield and Julianna Margulies left before Edwards.
Through the years, viewers have watched Dr. Greene save lives, make mistakes, get divorced, nurse his dying father, fall in love and ultimately confront his own mortality. "ER" executive producer John Wells calls Edwards the show's "moral center."
Yet considering he's the lead actor in television's top-rated show, Edwards sometimes seems hidden in plain sight.
He's never won an Emmy, and wasn't even nominated the last three years. "The critics feel that only by shepherding or promoting shows that people aren't watching, they're actually doing their jobs," Edwards said. "I understand a degree of that underdog thing. But I also think we've set a really good example of something that should be applauded."
"ER" (which airs Thursday at 10 p.m. EST on NBC) has shown a remarkable staying power with viewers despite its cast changes and, arguably, a darkening tone. "I think our core audience is an audience that doesn't watch TV," Edwards said. "They found something that wasn't condescending, that doesn't try to explain what medicine was or what life was about. When people stop coming up to me to say, 'I don't watch TV but I watch your show,' then I think we will have lost it."
During an episode in February, the still-recovering Greene is shown with his girlfriend, actress Alex Kingston's Dr. Elizabeth Korday, bemoaning an investigation into his capacity to practice.
One critic, David Bianculli of the New York Daily News, wrote that this season's "almost laughable trauma overload" for Greene has made the series nearly unwatchable. Edwards said he liked the brain cancer story line when it was first presented to him, particularly since Kingston's character is pregnant.
As an actor, he particularly liked the story line where Greene nursed his dying father. It's perhaps every man's dream that he could have this kind of time to talk to his father at the end of his life, he said.
Unlike fellow actor Eriq La Salle -- who made it known he didn't like his fictional relationship with Kingston's character -- Edwards appreciates the way it has been portrayed.
"It just seems like two people who love each other and are going through life in a way I can relate to," he said. "Oftentimes we want to simplify what love is in relationships in television by making it based on either sex or conflict. So much of love that I've ever related to in life is about perseverance and surprises."<
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