"Help."
Just a simple word. Small, compact, but not without meaning.
"Please. Help me." The little, delicate voice stirred the room's energy slowly, letting the complexity of the situation fully settle, gather, and begin to dissolve any sense of reason that happened to be strolling by. It came from a floating letter, just curling in and out just in front of the Doctor's eyes, transfixing all of them.
Rory and Amy's expressions were the most understandable. The blatant confusion was evident in her bright, young eyes, and concern was easily found in his ever-creasing forehead. Amy repeated the words to herself. Help. Please. Help me. It was definitely a child, she assumed, noticing the high crest of the words and the wavering tone. A female child. A scared child. But, why? She took to looking anxiously at Rory, but discovered no explanation in his slightly agape mouth and wondering eyes. So, she looked at the Doctor. After all, if there were ever a man to understand something like this, it would be him.
He truly hated it when she looked at him that way; all expectant and hopeful, like he knew all the answers. Because the truth was and always would be something he would never care to admit—that he didn't know everything. Compared to the amount of knowledge psychologically attainable, he hardly knew anything, and yet she kept looking at him like that.
"Help… please, help me. It hurts. Make it s-stop." The child was crying now, softly, and it completely ripped apart the Doctor's consciousness. He knew very well that children cried for attention, they wanted to be heard and acknowledged. But this girl was crying quietly, attempting to go unnoticed. She didn't want to be heard, and that could only mean one thing: The creature hurting her was close enough for her to fear it hearing her.
The Doctor took hold of the letter and looked it over. Nothing was written on it, nothing at all except a small address and time for Oregon in 1983. He tried talking to the little girl several times, but she didn't seem to be getting his voice at the other end. Amy and Rory's confusion grew until they too were trying to call to the girl. Eventually, the child had cried through all of her tears and fell—presumably—asleep.
"Who is she?" Amy questioned when at last the girl had ceased sobbing. "What's going on?"
"I don't know." the Doctor admitted, frustratedly running his hands through his mop of hair. He walked back and forth, pacing, thinking. The once-father inside of him supposed he ought to go check up on the girl—make sure she was alright, and do something if she wasn't—but his obnoxiously sensible side determined that he had already meddled enough for a century or two, and he really should just stay out of things for the meantime. But what if she's hurt, really hurt? What then? Would he just stand idly by and allow a little girl to get hurt? Is that the sort of man he was turning in to?
"Well," he said, clapping his hands together smartly and staring unsurely at a continuously confused pair of Ponds. "How do you two feel about 1983 Oregon?"