The TV nearest to Isabel flickered with silent images of the Dr. Phil show. Captions scrolled across the screen. The talk show host sat there with two girls, about Phoebe’s age or maybe a little older, and two sets of adults who appeared to be their parents. Dr. Phil wore his usual serious expression as he spoke to the parents. Isabel read the subtitles. “So when did you first notice something was wrong?” Dr. Phil asked. “After things had already gone pretty far,” one mother said. The other mother agreed, saying she’d had no idea. Isabel wondered what they were referring to, though she’d felt similarly shocked when she’d learned of Phoebe’s “self-injury,” the label Dr. Sharma had applied to Phoebe’s cutting. “It’s a way of coping with emotional pain by inflicting physical pain on one’s self,” she had explained. For a time Isabel couldn’t understand why her beautiful girl had done this. She could hardly look at Phoebe’s wounds and scars without bursting into tears, and Isabel was not prone to hysterical crying.
What do You think about Saving Phoebe Murrow: A Novel?
