Murnaghan relaxes briefly in the tiny bedroom the hospital provides for residents on call during the long, lonely hours of the night. He's spent more (...)

Original Toronto Star caption: Murnaghan relaxes briefly in the tiny bedroom the hospital provides for residents on call during the long, lonely hours of the night. He's spent more nights here than he can count. But now that he's a senior resident, he's on second call, he can go home to wait for the phone call if there's a problem that the junior resident can't handle. He hopes that maybe one of his three children - aged 5, 3 and 7 months - will still be up when he does get home. He hopes, too, he can take half an hour for a quiet chat with his wife whom, he jokes, refers to herself as a singlemother, before he must disappear into the study and open his textbooks for the rest of the evening. Some days I wonder if it's worth it, he admits. Most nights, it's home at 10 and I fall asleep at my desk.