At least he didn't die alone

She never saw his face. Just the blood. It was everywhere.

She touched his head as he lay on the pavement, and over the sound of the traffic whizzing by, she heard him take a deep breath. One of his last.It's possible that Rebecca Lane and Bernard St. Clair crossed paths before. On a street corner, maybe, or at the homeless shelter where she worked 20 years ago.

All that matters is that they met Thursday night, in the moments after St. Clair, 49, was struck by a semi-truck while trying to cross Interstate 5 near Airport Way South. Washington State Patrol officials believe he was living in a homeless camp nearby.

At about 8:40 p.m., Lane, 52, was driving home from a work event, her husband, Michael, in the car behind her. She noticed the cars ahead of her swerving, trying not to hit something, then saw it was a body. She stopped her car in the HOV lane and ran back to the body — to St. Clair.

"I wasn't scared, just deeply worried," Lane told me.

St. Clair was lying on his side, "not a natural pose," she said. His skull was smashed.

Michael Lane blocked the lane with his car and got a blanket to cover St. Clair while Rebecca touched his head and back, and leaned in close.

"I told him that we were with him," she said, voice cracking, "and that we were going to help him to be safe, and that we would protect him, and that he wasn't alone.

"Isn't that what anyone wants to hear?"

Other people stopped to help, including a nursing student who detected a pulse. Another man — Lane thinks his name was Paul — gave "a beautiful, beautiful prayer."

When a state patrolman arrived, they moved out of the way, circled up and prayed.

St. Clair, of Lakewood, was transported to Harborview Medical Center, where he died. The driver, 56, wasn't injured and won't be charged.

Lane and I tried to make sense of it.

"When you come across people who need help, you just do it," she said. "But as a species, we are pulled toward meaning-making."

In the days since, other things have happened to give the night context.

Lane has had long talks with her husband and her sister, who is a therapist. Spring is here, so she and her husband are planting vegetables. On Saturday, she went to see the Dalai Lama speak about compassion. Then her father went into the hospital for hip surgery.

"Aging, fragility, life and death," she said. "The big philosophical stuff has been getting me.

"To be 52, and for this to be the first time I have seen someone mortally wounded. ... That is a privilege, compared to what most people in the world go through every day."

And there is this: "This was a horrific way to die, and I want some meaning made out of it."

She wants whoever cared for St. Clair — his natural family or the one in the camp — to know that he didn't die alone. There was a woman kneeling beside him, a man praying aloud, and a circle of strangers, holding hands on the freeway on a busy Thursday night.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Thanks for stopping.