Transit workers are trained to watch people on the subway platform for signs of distress.

But there’s no way to prepare for what happens when they’re confronted with a suicide, says subway operator Shelley Pett.

First-hand accounts of her experience and that of her husband, Kevin, who also works on the subway, are documented in Chance Encounters, a student-made film running this weekend in the Toronto Hot Docs Festival.

The Petts decided to participate in the film to provide a perspective on suicide that is seldom discussed.

“Everyone forgets the operator lives with this for the rest of their lives. …You forget about the poor witness on the platform, and the poor drivers,” Shelley Pett, 36, told The Toronto Star.

For the Petts, who have been married 15 years and have four children, the suicides of strangers shattered their peace of mind and rocked their marriage.

When his train pulled into High Park station that day in October 2009, Kevin, 39, couldn’t figure out what the man on the platform was doing.

“When he looked at me and our eyes met, time just stood still. It felt like driving your car over railroad tracks, that rumbling feeling you get … I realized then that I just killed somebody,” he says on-camera.

Usually a laid-back guy, Kevin became withdrawn, sometimes just sitting on the couch with the hood of his sweater drawn tightly around his face, says Shelley.

“I was so angry at him. I’m the kind of person who says, ‘Just suck it up and deal with it.’”

But then on a beautiful December day, against the odds — because suicides are relatively rare on the subway — her perspective was shifted.

“All of a sudden everything stopped, and this guy jumps out in front of me. I didn’t want to remember any of this. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to hear it and I tucked my feet up and I covered my ears with my hand and I closed my eyes and I screamed,” she says on-camera.

Shelley’s reaction was different from Kevin’s; instead of brooding, she sprang into mad action to cope. “I cleaned my house. My house was sparkling. I was taking out drawers and cleaning stuff,” she remembers.

The TTC was supportive as the couple recovered from these traumatic experiences, says Shelley. A technique called disclosure therapy, in which they repeatedly told their stories as a way of neutralizing the power of the event, has helped them heal.

“They’re so adept at telling their story. That was part of their therapy — just keep telling their story over and over again, just to face it and be comfortable with it, not to try and bury it but to bring it out,” said the film’s co-writer and director, Justin Colautti, 27, a student in the Humber College Film and Television Production program.

He thinks the Petts are still recovering but praised their patience and their willingness to tell their story.

The 10-minute movie was shot in the studio, at the Petts’ home and on the TTC.

The idea came from media coverage of suicides on the TTC, said Colautti. But the story isn’t confined to Toronto.

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“Using Kevin and Shelley as a vehicle, it’s a way to broach the subject without statistics,” he said. “I wasn’t interested in talking about statistics. It was purely their story.”

The 10-minute film, part of the festival’s Canadian Spectrum program, is showing before the screening of a feature documentary called Grinders at the TIFF Bell Lightbox at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, and the Fox Theatre in the Beach at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets can be purchased by phone at 416-637-5150 or online at www.hotdocs.ca . On the day of the screening tickets must be purchased at the cinema box office.