My mornings are rushed and I have to commit to a strict schedule in order to relieve my off-going on time. From the moment my train arrives at the station to when I am supposed to be in uniform leaves me 20 minutes to walk to the office, get briefed by the supervisor who was on the previous shift, and then get changed. On this morning I walked in and could hear banter from the shift prior coming from the brief room. They were talking about someone getting run over and it sounded like it had happened on their shift but they could have been talking about a TV episode for all I knew, I thought about stopping to ask but no time, briefing.

Roman greeted me with tired eyes that only a night shift could produce. "Morning." he said.

"What's going on, anything happen?" I asked.

"Sweet fuck all. Uh, I did payroll last night, I closed some reports, we had some dick banging on the doors around 0300 but we shooed him away." he said with a shrug.

I shrugged back.

"Oh wait," he said, "you know the homeless guy with the big beard who is always at the corner of Main and Commerce? he got his legs run over by a truck last night around 2300 or so."

"Oh shit!" I replied, "What happened? Was he on the road?"

"No, it looks like he was asleep on the sidewalk and a delivery truck drove by and cut the corner short so it went up on the side walked and ran over his legs. Looks like no one noticed him for about an hour but around midnight someone was walking by and stopped to call him an ambulance, the truck didn't stop but I'm not even sure the driver knew that he ran over him." explained Roman.

"Shit that sucks, is he alright?" I asked.

"Not really sure," he said, "we noticed it on camera when we saw an ambulance at the corner with lights on. I reviewed footage to see if I could find out what happened and that's when I saw that he was run over. It was a rental truck so there was no way to identify it. I could see him moving the whole time when they put him on the stretched so hopefully he's alright. A cop asked if we had footage, I told him that we did but that it doesn't identify the truck so he didn't seem interested, the footage is saved if you need it."

I didn't really know who he was talking about, there were a few people that slept at that intersection and they rotated frequently. A lot of the regulars I knew and had friendly conversations with at one point or another. As Roman left to get some sleep, I went to get changed, it would be about three weeks before I found out who it actually was.

On a Tuesday morning I was walking on the sidewalk doing a perimeter check on Commerce Street when I passed one of the regulars named Bruce who was sitting down and leaning back against one of our buildings. One of his legs was cut off at the knee and was bandaged up with dirty white wraps I could see sticking out below his shorts. Bruce was around 50 years old; he was a heavy man with long curly hair and a big white beard. He usually wore a T-shirt and shorts even in the winter. He had a big belly that stuck out under his shirt and was enjoying a beer with some food, his empty coffee cup which he used to collect change was within arm's reach. He was usually smiling and today was no different.

"Bruce! what happened to your leg!?" I half shouted.

"I got run over by a truck at the intersection a few weeks ago, it was too damaged so they had to cut it off. It's too bad," he said with a cheeky smile, "my legs are my best feature so I'm told"

To be honest I had forgotten about the truck incident by that point and had never even thought about the consequences of having your legs run over by a heavy vehicle. He told me about his experience, how they were nice to him in the hospital and that he was considering cutting the other one off to go back and see one of the nurses he had met in there. His humour was something that stood out to me. It was so unbelievable that a man with nothing who had just had his leg and mobility taken away could still be joking with me. I don't think I have that kind of resolve within me.

Bruce and I went back about seven or eight years at the time and I remember meeting him one day when he approached me on the property while drinking a beer just to say hi, he asked me to say hi to Mike for him who was a supervisor at the time. I of course booted him out but was friendly and we were on talking terms since then. After that there was an incident where there was a broken window in the building on the tenth floor directly above where he was sitting down leaning back against the wall asking for change. I yelled at him to run away because it wasn't safe. He ran out of there and came back later to thank me. He always wore a Santa hat around Christmas and with his big white beard he looked a bit like Santa. We never got into why he was on the street but he seemed to like the drink which may have been a factor.

Awhile after that he was gifted a wheel chair by someone but while commuting through one of our lobbies his back wheel fell off and he landed on the frame and got stuck in place. We got out a tool kit and helped him get his wheel back on so he could be on his way.

We still see him around sometimes although a lot less frequently, I think he finds it difficult to commute. It didn't look like the wheel chair that he was gifted was in very good shape. It is difficult to see someone's life change in the blink of an eye, I hope he is still practicing courage and humour.

What did I learn? - Be careful around the road even if you are on the sidewalk, getting run over by a heavy vehicle can lead to an amputation. Don't trust anyone walking down the street to call you an ambulance if you are lying on the ground bleeding and writhing in pain. Finally, your attitude can affect your outlook and ultimately your outcome.