Way Down I'll Go

Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley

As Rachel drove, she wondered for the 86th time what she was doing.

Treating a patient on her own? Driving home a man she'd only just met? Staring at him like a psycho? What was wrong with her? Normally, a situation like this would have sent her running in the opposite direction screaming for help. But when she'd looked at him, really looked at him, she'd been so drawn in that the rest came as easily as blinking.

She glanced over at him again as he cuddled the baby. He was in pain. He did a good job of hiding it, but she could see it in the tightness of his lips and the stiffness of his movements and how he winced ever so slightly when he took a deep breath. His cough sounded terrible and he clearly had a fever. In short, he was in no condition to be taking care of six children, one of them a very sick baby.

"It's a right at the next stop sign."

She could barely make out his words now; they had gotten progressively softer as the night had gone on. She sensed he was nervous around her, though she couldn't work out why. If anything, she should be nervous around him with all his scars and the bloodshot eyes.

But she wasn't.

The way he held his brother's hand so gently and wrapped his own coat around him to keep him warm had broken her heart. He didn't appear old enough to have so much responsibility, but his eyes had the look of one who'd been to hell and hadn't quite made it back yet.

The streets looked increasingly worse the farther they went, and she shuddered at the thought of living in this part of town. The neighborhood in which the clinic was located wasn't great, but this was like every crime movie she'd ever seen and worse.

And he'd been planning on walking through here? At night? With a baby?

"Over on the left. That's us," he wheezed.

She pulled a u-turn and parked on the street next to the ancient apartment building. They sat for a second, neither knowing how to proceed. Rachel never had problems talking to people, but this man made her tongue tied. She tried to think of something to say but to her surprise, he beat her to it.

"Thank you, again, for all of this." His chest rattled as he talked and he didn't meet her eyes. "I owe you so much but-"

"No, please, it's okay. It was my pleasure," she cut him off.

She didn't want to hear him apologize for circumstances that were clearly beyond his control.

He met her eyes once more and she was again astonished by how beautiful he was, underneath the stress and grime and illness. He was clearly underweight, but his features were striking and his eyes were a rare color of grey that changed with the light, a jarring complement to his caramel skin.

She realized that she'd been holding her breath.

"Thank you."

The tone of his voice and his expression gave those two words more weight than they'd ever held before. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but remembered him flinching and decided against it. He opened the door and got out of the car stiffly, shutting it behind him. As he walked to the building, she saw him sway slightly, then correct and keep going.

Don't do it, Rachel. For pity sake, you're going to get shot or raped. STAY IN THE CAR.

She ignored the voice in her head. It was making too much sense and sounded annoyingly like her mother. Taking the keys from the ignition, she braced herself and followed him inside.

He was already up three flights of stairs by the time she reached him and was leaning heavily against a door, trying to fit a key in the lock. He succeeded and opened the door just as she reached him.