The Age of Optimism

                                          a short story by Cindy Hammel

         After pouring his life into the study of Attention Deficit Disorderly children and doing his very best to tranquilize and inject calmness into families suffering from abundant energy, Dr. Jerrod Fry nibbled on a raspberry tart. Crumbs fell on his button-down shirt as it rose and fell in the morning sunlight. His coffee grew cold. His assistant buzzed for him, but he didn’t answer. She buzzed again, and again. His first patient was here. He didn’t care. Psychology Today lay open on his desk. 

        Up until this morning he was convinced that he had been making children happier, families functional again, and destroying annoying hyper-activity like it was the ultimate force of darkness. Uninvited energy had become his life-long enemy.  He had published books. He’d given lectures. He liked to consider himself on the verge of greatness. He had seized his noble mission to quell children on the rampage with every second he had. Then two ex-wives and one estranged daughter later, his work was truly his only love, his retreat, his life. Yet it never occurred to Dr. Fry that he just could have been bottling all that energy instead. 

        He read the first lines of the article over and over again, feeling much more than just a lost opportunity settle deep in his gut:

Dr. Patel has shattered modern medicine’s understanding of Attention Deficit Disorder. After harvesting the excess energy from patients with A.D.D, Patel has launched a bottled energy drink called A.S.S. Juice.  The refreshing Attention Surplus Supplement brings the excess energy to those who are running a little short.

        Dr. Fry took a long sip of cold coffee, opened his drawer and started shooting Ritalin into his arm, one syringe at a time.

© Cindy Hammel 2011. Some rights reserved. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/