Pierre Shortliffe remembers the knife.

Nearly three weeks after the attack that nearly killed him, the sharp metal point is the only thing he can picture clearly.

"I just remember the tip of that blade coming at me," he said. "Everything behind that point is kind of blurry."

During the late evening of Aug. 2, 2018, Shortliffe was leaving a bar with a friend in Bloor West Village when a stranger approached, yelled something, then brandished the weapon.

In his hazy memory of the incident, Shortliffe remembers reaching out with his left hand to try to grab the blade.

Instead, it sliced through his left thumb and index finger before striking him square in the chest.

Within a matter of seconds, Shortliffe was stabbed four times. One of the wounds punctured his heart. Another breached his lung cavity.

Two days later, he woke up from an induced coma and looked down at his body in disbelief.

"All you see is an endless road of stitches, these metal staples that go right down your chest," said Shortliffe, 40, from his hospital bed at St. Michael's Hospital.

Pierre Shortliffe was put in an induced coma for two days after the stabbing. He credits his mother and family for helping the recovery process. (Submitted)

He later found out that doctors had cracked open his sternum and applied three sutures to the hole in his heart in an emergency surgery, narrowly saving him from becoming Toronto's 15th person to be killed by a stabbing in 2018.

"They did tell my parents and my family that it was a very close call," he said. "It could have gone either way."

Since the attack, Shortliffe has undergone dozens of operations and treatments, including a tracheotomy, surgery to his left hand, and the near-constant insertion and removal of tubes from his torso to drain his internal bleeding.

'It's so confusing to me'

On a sunny Monday morning inside a shared room in St. Mike's cardiac ward, Shortliffe tells a nurse he's around a six out of 10 on the pain scale. The number would be a fair bit higher, he figures, without his steady flow of painkillers.

The gregarious IT professional is now in the final stages of his in-hospital recovery, a process that was extended after doctors discovered blood leaking into his lungs last week.

During his time in hospital, Shortliffe says he's been battling pain, boredom, and contemplating a question to which he still has no answer.

"I don't understand how somebody that I don't know could want to put an end to my life," he said. "It's so confusing to me."

Toronto Police arrested his attacker shortly after responding to the call, and reported afterward that he and Shortliffe did not appear to know each other.

The accused, a 41-year-old man, is facing a slew of charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon.

"I need to know what compelled you to stab a complete stranger four times," Shortliffe said of his attacker.

Police responded to the stabbing shortly before midnight on Aug. 2. They arrested the alleged attacker shortly after. (Tony Smyth/CBC)

A new perspective on violence

A lifelong Torontonian, Shortliffe says the attack has given him a new perspective on the prevalence of stabbings and violence in Toronto, which he previously only thought about in passing after seeing news headlines.

"You see it all the time," he said. "I still want to believe it's a safe city, even though it's getting harder and harder to believe that."

Out of 63 homicides so far this year, 14 were stabbings. The total number of people killed is now on pace to far exceed any of the past four years.

Shortliffe estimates that his stabbing has cost the city's emergency services and hospitals around $200,000 so far, with more costs to be borne by the city's courts if the accused goes to trial.

The attack's personal impact has been profound too, though harder to quantify.

Shortliffe says he's already battling fears about safety, life in Toronto and strangers.

I'm pretty scarred up and every time I'm going to look in the mirror, for the rest of my life, every time I get out of the shower, I'm unfortunately going to look at this scar. - Pierre Shortliffe

He said an outpouring of support has helped allay those fears. He thanked friends and family for starting a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $9,000 to cover his expenses while he's away from work.

That support has been critical to his recovery, he said, though he now anticipates a lifetime of reminders about the night he almost died.

"I'm pretty scarred up and every time I'm going to look in the mirror, for the rest of my life, every time I get out of the shower, I'm unfortunately going to look at this scar," Shortliffe said.

"And I'm unfortunately going to have to remember what happened on Aug. 2, 2018."