Amy’s wrists were so swollen she couldn’t use her hands.“I think they might be broken. I got beaten with a baton. I was blocking it with my arms above my head,” she said, her voice barely more than murmur.It was shortly before 11 p.m. on a Thursday night in early May, and Amy – not her real name – was sitting inside the Sherbourne Health Centre’s Health Bus, talking with two outreach workers.Amy is a sex worker and an injection drug user. She’s homeless, but sometimes stays in a “trap house,” she said. The Star agreed not to publish her real name.Amy said after the attack she went to a hospital, but she fled without getting treatment when staff called the police.Amy is just one of the hundreds of marginalized people the Health Bus program reaches every month. It has run for more than 20 years, providing on-the-spot outreach to homeless and under-housed people six days a week at seven different stops around southeastern Toronto.When Amy came on the bus in early May during the weekly sex-worker outreach run, Lisa Norton was waiting.Along with clean needles, a handful of free condoms and zero judgment, Norton also gave Amy the name of a nurse at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre who could get Amy the health care she needed without involving the police.“That one stop was worth the whole night,” Norton said, after Amy left. “If we hadn’t been here, who knows what would have happened to her.”Amy’s visit is a perfect example of the work the outreach bus does, but it also highlights how some of the programming has been eclipsed by the times.Sex workers in particular are becoming harder to reach on the streets, as the trade moves online to social media and sites like Backpages.com. The night of Amy’s visit, staff only saw two other sex workers during the three hour run. Sometimes they don’t see anyone at all.The buses themselves are also ...
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