Nights in Rodanthe Read Online Free PDF Page A

bars; he ignored the goings-on of the school athletic teams. He bought a television
     on a whim, but he never unpacked it from the box and sold it a year later. Though shy around girls, he was introduced to Martha,
     a sweet-tempered blonde from Georgia who was working at the medical school library, and when he never got around to asking
     her out, she took it upon herself to do so. Though worried about the frantic pace he held himself to, she nonetheless accepted
     his proposal, and they walked the aisle ten months later. With finals looming, there was no time for a honeymoon, but he promised
     they’d head someplace nice when school was out. They never got around to it. Mark, their son, was born a year later, and in
     the first two years of his son’s life, Paul never once changed a diaper or rocked the boy to sleep.
    Rather, he studied at the kitchen table, staring at diagrams of human physiology or studying chemical equations, taking notes,
     and acing one exam after the next. He graduated at the top of his class in three years and moved the family to Baltimore to
     do his surgical residency at Johns Hopkins.
    Surgery, he knew by then, was his calling. Many specialties require a great deal of human interaction and hand-holding; Paul
     was not particularly good at either. But surgery was different; patients weren’t as interested in communication skills as
     they were in ability, and Paul had not only the confidence to put them at ease before the operation, but the skill to do whatever
     was required. He thrived in that environment. In the last two years of his residency, Paul worked ninety hours a week and
     slept four hours a night but, oddly, showed no signs of fatigue.
    After his residency, he completed a fellowship in cranial-facial surgery and moved the family to Raleigh, where he joined
     a practice with another surgeon just as the population was beginning to boom. As the only specialists in that field in the
     community, their practice grew. By thirty-four, he’d paid off his debts from medical school. By thirty-six, he was associated
     with every major hospital in the area and did the bulk of his work at the University of North Carolina Medical Center. There,
     he participated in a joint clinical study with physicians from the Mayo Clinic on neurofibromas. A year later, he had an article
     published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
concerning cleft palates. Another article on hemangiomas followed four months later and helped to redefine surgical procedures
     for infants in that field. His reputation grew, and after operating successfully on Senator Norton’s daughter, who’d been
     disfigured in a car accident, he made the front page of
The Wall Street Journal.
    In addition to reconstructive work, he was one of the first physicians in North Carolina to expand his practice to include
     plastic surgery, and he caught the wave just as it started to swell. His practice boomed, his income multiplied, and he started
     to accumulate things. He purchased a BMW, then a Mercedes, then a Porsche, then another Mercedes. He and Martha built the
     home of their dreams. He bought stocks and bonds and shares in a dozen different mutual funds. When he realized he couldn’t
     keep up with the intricacies of the market, he hired a money manager. After that, his money began doubling every four years.
     Then, when he had more than he’d ever need for the rest of his life, it began to triple.
    And still he worked. He scheduled surgeries not only during the week, but on Saturday as well. He spent Sunday afternoons
     in the office. By the time he was forty-five, the pace he kept eventually burned out his partner, who left to work with another
     group of doctors.
    In the first few years after Mark was born, Martha often talked about having another child. In time, she stopped bringing
     it up. Though she forced him to take vacations, he did so reluctantly, and in the end, she took to visiting her parents with
     Mark and