Forget cardiac distress. ER fans are just plain heartbroken by Noah Wyle's decision to quit playing Dr. John Carter at the end of this season. But is his exit really definite? Here, TV Guide Online's Daniel R. Coleridge presses the slightly coy TV doctor for some answers, stat! Wyle also dishes his moonlighting gig as an unlikely action hero in TNT's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (Sunday, 8 pm/ET).

TV Guide Online: Why did you decide to leave ER? We're gonna miss you.
Noah Wyle: Thank you. It wasn't an easy decision to come to, that's for sure. I'm still doing a bit of soul-searching about it. Really, two years ago, when my son was born, I started thinking, "I don't want to spend 70 hours a week on a soundstage anymore. I don't want to be out of commission nine months a year." It really had nothing to do specifically with ER. It had to do with other aspects of my life finally demanding their equal time.

TVGO: So you wanted more time with family?
Wyle: Time with family, time to do other things. As incredibly satisfying as 22 episodes of ER can be over the course of a year, there are other jobs out there and other characters I'm interested in playing. I may want to direct down the line. I may want to do nothing. I'm looking forward to having the freedom to follow my bliss.

TVGO: Not to be cheeky but, of course, it's titillating to me that you're "still soul-searching" about leaving ER. Could anything make you stay — perhaps a zillion-dollar offer like they threw at Julianna Margulies?
Wyle: As far as a zillion-dollar offer, I've done all right on the show. I'm not complaining. I'm not leaving because I'm not paid enough, that's for sure. (Chuckles) I think, if you need to be titillated, I very much would like to be part of the end of the show, whenever that comes. That would be a wonderful sort of bookend to it, to have the third-year medical student in the pilot return in a position of authority over the emergency room at the end. I'd like to have that sense of closure to it. So I'm hoping they don't kill me! I'm fairly confident they won't.

TVGO: Kill Dr. Carter? Bite your tongue depressor. So if you go, you'd come back.
Wyle: In terms of a sort of periodic level of involvement, I'm open to talking about that. But we really haven't gotten to it yet. At the moment, all I can do is answer to where I'm at, which is six months shy of the end of my contract. I'm fairly confident that I'm not gonna be a season regular next year.

TVGO: "Fairly confident" sounds like there's wiggle room. So we can still hold out a little hope?
Wyle: Yeah.

TVGO: So you're doing an Indy Jones turn in The Librarian?
Wyle: Absolutely. I'm the biggest fan of Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone and all movies in this escapist adventure genre. I never get to play action characters who are called upon to perform heroic deeds like that.

TVGO: Your heroics on ER usually involve a scalpel, not a machete.
Wyle: (Laughs) Well put! I did actually have a little machete in ER's Africa episodes, but there was no cliff-diving.