How dare she.
"I'm sorry to hear about this," says Fitzgerald. "It makes me sad all over again."
On May 30, 2009, Fitzgerald, 56, also had the temerity to cross the city on a balmy Saturday night. He'd just gotten off work at the Wistar Institute in West Philly, where he worked as a maintenance mechanic, and was biking home to his South Philly apartment when he was attacked by a flash mob near Broad and Bainbridge streets.
He was beaten nearly to death. He suffered a frontal-lobe brain injury, broken facial bones and ribs, contusions and a punctured lung. He was in a coma at Hahnemann for weeks and is still undergoing rehab. Though his seizures have ceased, he doesn't know if he'll ever return to work.
"I get tired all the time. I can't focus or make decisions. I can't find the right words. I can't explain things. I get confused," says Fitzgerald. "My neurologist says after two years, your recovery slows down. So where I'm at now might be where I'll always be. It makes me sad."
Sad is a word Fitzgerald uses often when he ponders life since his brutal beat-down.
He is sad that he now spends his mornings sitting at a local Starbucks because he is hungry for a social routine. He is a reserved man - "I guess I'm a loner," he says - but he used to bike early to work, to mingle pleasantly with co-workers before beginning the day.
He's sad that, instead of handling with aplomb the complicated mechanical systems at Wistar, he now labors over crossword puzzles, hoping his locked-up brain will loosen words that used to tumble freely from his lips.
He's sad that he's now wary of walking anywhere alone, when he used to be an intrepid traveler - driving cross-country on his own and exploring towns in Europe with solitary ease.
