All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 77: Rescued

I closed my eyes as tightly as possible and curled up on my side with my head buried in my arms.

Multiple voices were talking now, two, maybe three people. I caught only bits and pieces of a hushed conversation that was now happening in my bedroom. They were all talking about me, glimpses of shock in their whispers.

I opened my eyes, but only slightly. Two women and a man wearing blue jackets huddled together in the middle of the bedroom.

I closed my eyes again when the one woman facing me made eye contact. That was followed by footsteps that stopped right next to the crib. I opened my eyes again.

A woman was standing next to the crib, peering down at me. "Everything is going to be all right. We're going to get you out of there."

I shifted to the far corner of the crib, but I couldn't take my eyes off her now that I could see more clearly with the flashlight not shining in my face.

"Hey, my name is Amanda. What's your name?"

The word stuck in my throat for a few seconds until, at last, I could whisper it out. "Sarah."

"We're going to get you out of here, Sarah." Amanda stood over the crib, attempting to figure out how the sliding door worked until she flipped the right latch and pulled it open. "Why don't you sit here on the edge for a second?"

I complied with the request, even though it meant sitting on my now messy diaper.

Amanda placed her hand over her nose as she leaned in toward me, feeling both of my arms and my legs with her hands.

She turned to speak to the two other people in the room. "Minimal bruising. No broken bones. Doesn't seem malnourished. Just..." She let her words trail off as she looked down at my diaper and then back at the bottles and pacifier in the crib, as if at a loss for how to describe what she was seeing.

"Is that what I think it is?" the woman behind Amanda asked.

"Is it what, Jody? The man asked.

Jodie was pointing to something on the dresser. The baby monitor.

The man walked over to the baby camera that was on top of the dresser, pointed down directly at the crib. He picked it up and shifted it in his hands for a few seconds before pressing a button that turned it off.

"We need to figure out who was watching this right away," the man said. "They're going to know that something is off, even if they hadn't already seen us."

"Would it be her parents?" Jodie asked.

"No, it's just the mother," Amanda said.

"Then we need to figure out where she works and contact the sheriff's office. Can't risk her getting on the run. Not after this."

I was still sitting on the edge of the crib, watching their discussion, their attention momentarily diverted from me. My pacifier must have been kicked out behind the crib when I had sat up, so I placed my thumb into my mouth instead.

"Are we going to need an ambulance?"

"I don't think so; she seems more or less fine physically; we can get her to the hospital in one of our vehicles."

"But we can't do it like this. Let's help get her cleaned up first."

The man turned back to look at me briefly. "How are we going to manage that?"

"Probably best to get her cleaned up in the shower. We passed one on the way to the bedroom. I'll go and get it started."

"Yes, you two can help the girl with getting cleaned up. I'm going to get in touch with the sheriff's office and the hospital. They need to find her mother ASAP."