Something changed about four hours after I posted. Stan ran out to buy a soft bean bag chair for Marcy to rest in while I bit my nails and waited by the phone for another call from the EMT.
Their suggestions weren't bad, but each one of them sounded more gruesome and torturous than the one prior to it. Acid, or maybe some sort of explosive, they said. It made me physically shake to imagine doing that to my little girl.
I was tired and exhausted, but I still had some sanity left to know that I didn't want to make my little girl be in more pain. Especially now that her screams had mostly turned into whimpers as she rested, even crying pitifully in her sleep.
I stepped away from her for a minute or two, just to regain some sense of composure; and checked all the suggestions that folks posted here.
Some of it was quite appalling, suggesting that we kill her to save her the pain. But others suggested that we should attempt a cut from further away up her arm.
As u/ribnag said it so well, a whole arm amputation beat her current predicament.
I showed my husband the suggestion and he agreed with the logic, so I went back to Marcy to make her comfortable as he made the call.
That was when I noticed that it was no longer just the lower part of her arm stuck, now the wall was connected directly at the arm right beneath her shoulder. She was being pulled further in.
I covered my mouth to stifle a scream and rushed to get Stan. When he came and saw what had happened, he made a few quick decisions. "Don't wake her, if she's not in pain right now maybe that's a good thing. We can get this over with before it sucks her even further inside," he suggested.
I nodded, trying not to panic as I paced the kitchen. But the hospital wasn't responding. The one nurse we did finally get ahold of thought we were pulling some kind of prank and hung up.
"What're we supposed to do?" I asked Stan as we consulted in the living room.
"I'm not sure.... but I think right now we both need sleep. As cruel as it sounds there is nothing we can do for her at the moment... maybe with some good rest we can clear our heads and get some better ideas," he suggested.
"I don't want to leave her alone," I admitted as I stated down the hall where our little girl was resting in the bean bag. She looked like a little rag doll, Limp but hanging by some invisible thread on the other side of the wall.
"We can take shifts. You need rest," Stan insisted and then went to lay down alongside her as I covered my mouth again and tried to calm down. He was right. I knew that I needed to take a break from this insanity.
So I went to grab a hot shower, and then climbed into bed. But sleep was nearly impossible as I thought about Marcy and how it could be at any time the wall might decide to pull her in further. Somehow or another though I got a few hours.
In the morning, my husband did have a more leveled head and as we stood there watching her sleep and make soft coos of pain, he whispered, "What was she doing before this happened anyway?"
I rubbed my eyes tiredly and realized I had never really gotten a chance to ask her.
"I was sorting laundry and I heard her scream," I admitted. He nodded and then went to the kitchen to check his smart phone.
"I called Tim last night about possibly coming over to knock the wall down, since it seems like the area closest to her is what makes it painful I figure we go far enough out and start from there," he said and then added, "If that doesn't work, we might be able to drill from under the house."
I was focused on Marcy though, I realized she was waking up so I nodded absently at my husband's ideas and put all my attention on her.
"Hey babygirl. are you ok?" I asked getting on my knees as she opened her sleepy eyes.
She looked at me confused, perhaps thinking that the whole ordeal had been a bad dream; then she turned to see the wall was now right against her body and she began to whimper again.
"Mommy what's happening?" she asked desperately.
"Hey, it's okay. You don't feel any pain do you?" I asked as I clenched her other hand.
"No... just... it feels really numb. Tingly," she admitted. I then remembered that the paramedics had said the local anesthetic they used would be wearing off after about a day so the fact that she was still feeling something made me instantly nervous.
Stan had checked the exterior of the house. Our walls aren't too thick, so there couldn't possibly be over nine feet between the interior of the hallway to the edge of the house where she was trapped. But we hadn't been able to see anything. So where exactly was she feeling the pain at now?
"It's going to be ok, Uncle Tim is gonna come over and see what he can do to help," I told her. She nodded and asked if I could make her some breakfast.
Doing the simple routine task seemed like the best way for me to keep my mind off of my little girl's plight. I slowly washed the dishes and daydreamed about anything besides the wall.
Eventually Tim arrived, and as soon as he jumped inside he got a good look at the wall and Marcy.
"Heya Kiddo," he said smiling and offering Marcy a small trinket as a distraction while he got a better look.
"This is crazy," he admitted as he finished his examination and we all worried about what the next few hours might mean for Marcy.
Tim has brought a heavy duty saw from the back of his truck and set it up at the edge of the hall where the wall met the door of the laundry room. Stan got an extension cord and they got it set up as I distracted Marcy. "I'm not scared mommy... I just wanna go play in my room," she admitted.
Tim started up the saw and approached the wall. He was at least four feet away, but as soon as the saw touched the wall; Marcy's calm demeanor fractured into more pain.
"Stop! Stop!!!" I yelled. But the noise was so loud and Tim was wearing protective ear guards. Somehow though, he managed to hear Marcy's piercing screams and he instantly shut the equipment off.
"Shit. Is she okay?" he asked as he removed his eye-gear.
Marcy was shaking again, clenching her other fist and squeezing her side so hard that it was leaving a bruise. I tried to get her to tell me where it hurt, but she was at a loss for words.
"We have to try something else. Hitting the wall is no good," Stan said.
"If we could ever get those damned paramedics back here, maybe we could apply some stronger anesthetic from this side?" Tim suggested as he checked Marcy's free arm. While she was distracted with the pain, he made a small cut with his pocket knife against her palm and I slapped him away. "What is wrong with you? Are you trying to make her worse?" I asked angrily.
"Relax. It was just to test a theory. You said near to the wall she couldn't be hurt... but look on this side she can still bleed," he said gesturing to the successful cut.
"It's all the way up to her fucking shoulder Tim! Where the hell would we be able to cut??" I screamed back. He raised his hands defensively and muttered, "All right all right. Amputation is off the table right now. Let's try the other thing, drilling from underneath."
Stan seemed to agree that was a good idea so the two of them left the house while I worked frantically to calm my little girl down. She was so tired and worn out from everything that it didn't take as long.
As I sang a lullaby to her and let her rest her head against me, she looked up at me and mumbled, "Mommy I'm scared. Am I gonna be stuck like this forever?"
I rubbed her back and smiled, tears welling in my eyes. I didn't know but I lied to her. "No baby. Uncle Tim and daddy are going to get you out," I assured her. I could hear the two of them crawling under the house. We live in an area that is at the bottom of a hill, so the crawl space is mostly designed for water that trickles down to flow through and go into a nearby ditch. In other words I knew that Tim and Stan were likely on their backs struggling in muck and dirt to search for the right spot to drill.
"I'm sorry mommy," Marcy said abruptly as i went to the nearby vent in the floor to talk to Stan.
"It's ok honey, it's not your fault," I told her. She was whimpering again but not out of pain. This time she was scared. I recognized it as the face she usually made when she thought she would get in trouble.
Stan was telling me something about how i would need to send the drill down through the vent along with a cord, but my attention was focused on what Marcy was trying to tell me.
"Baby, why would you think you're in trouble?" I asked her as she squirmed uncomfortably. Now with 90% of her arm in the wall, it was nearly impossible for her to get in a position that wasn't going to hurt even with something to rest on.
"What were you doing before this happened?" I asked. Guilt was written all over her face.
"I'm sorry mommy I'm sorry. I didn't know," she admitted. She looked panicked. "No, no sweetie it's okay. You aren't in trouble," I told her.
"I- I- I was drawing... on the walls..." she sobbed.
For some reason, the way she said it made me feel a cold shiver run up and down my spine.
"It's okay baby," I said with a soft small. "It's going to be okay. You aren't in trouble," I told her.
But I really think she is. I'm about to send the drill down to Stan and Tim, but my gut is telling me that it won't work.
My gut is telling me there is something very wrong with this house.
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