SIR, CAN YOU GIVE ME A JUMP-START?

Not old.  Not young.  Not washed.  Not combed. Wrinkled clothes.  Flip-flops on her feet.  No ring.  No watch.  Old car.  Maybe 15 pounds of pressure in the tires.  Interior Chock-a-block  with what belongings she has.  Just finished eating what she bought for $1.00 at the $0.99 cent store for breakfast.  Round and round with strange story about how somebody turned her lights on and didn't shut them off.  Has to run away because the people who killed her battery might kill her like they killed her brother and her mother.  Doesn't know where to go.  Doesn't ask for money.  I offer some.  She says no.  I say why not?  I don't want to feel cheap.  She's nervous.  She explains that she is not afraid, just nervous.  Can't figure out how they could turn her lights on.  She says that she's not afraid of me.   Thank you.  She's nervous.  She buries her face in her hands.  She's not crying.  I notice her clothes.  Everything seems to be OK.  She can't figure out where to stay tonight.  Doesn't like being harassed.  I have her car hooked up now.  I invite her to get in her car.
"Can I start it now?"
"No, not yet.  Wait for my sign."
I start my car.  I signal her to try to start hers.  Broooommm.  I confess.  I'm relieved.  I look at her in her cockpit and I can tell that she is relieved too.
Now she's weeping quietly.  Now she's confronted with the reality of having to move on.
I detach the jumper cables.  I close her hood.  She's still uncomfortable.   I stow the cables.  She's out of her car.  She says, "I hope I can hide."  Shake of the head.  Turns away, boards the car and leaves.  No wave.  No smile.  Just a simple departure to nowhere.
This was quite an experience.  I have saved people's lives before in my life.  I can count four sure ones.  I have never felt self-aggrandized by it. It was just something that I did as one human to another.  That's not virtue.  It's nature.  This morning's experience is weirdly different.  I am still analyzing it.   I am not happy with myself over it.  Not a guilt fraught unhappiness, just a puzzled, empty sort of fish-tail ending kind of emptiness.  I cannot bring myself to believe unconditionally what this distraught person was telling me.  She never once tried to con me with a sob story.  She was matter-of-fact every moment of the 20 or so minutes that we were together.  My entire being was focused on the fact that her battery was dead.  I commiserated with her.  Consoled and comforted her with gentle words and never once gave her the kindness of absolute acceptance of her story.  In that frame of mind I paid her the indignity of not even asking her name.  I do that a lot anyway.  Belle scolds me a lot about that.  I think it is a New England thing.  At least, that's my pretext.  But this one is pushing me to analyze my behavior.  It is important to me to the point that I don't think that I will ever forget this event.  
It's strange how you can live so long and still act in such a way that makes you rethink who you are.  I'm the kind of person who believes in the infinity of God and I think that we are reflections of that infinity.  This morning, and throughout the day and maybe even continuing for a while, at least on and off,  there is a taste of that infinity in me.  All because a woman asked me to jump-start her car.