The pill

I revised my decade-old story and added a few twists at the end:

From the steep hill near the park, an old man emerged as if out of nowhere, walking slowly towards a bench near the sea. He sat there and took out some bread crumbs to feed the pigeons. He started looking around, watching people in the park enjoy a sunny weekend. Suddenly, his eye caught a teenager staring at the sea with a gloomy look on his face. The old man decided to go talk to him.

"Hello," the old man said. The teenager, startled, looked at the old man but did not say a thing. "You come here often?" The teenager said no. "Well, life can be cruel sometimes, I see a tired warrior when I look at you." The teenager did not seem accessible at first, giving terse replies to the old man's questions and comments. The old man, however, began to gain the boy's confidence by talking him down - that was, after all, his expertise in life. A non-judgmental outlook can go a long way in befriending strangers.

After a while, the boy finally admitted to the fact that he hated his life. He was 17, his grades at school were falling, he did not have a lot of friends, let alone a girlfriend. His parents did not understand him. How could they when he had a hard time in understanding himself? "I do not belong here," the boy said. "There is a concert at my high school today, I don't even want to go. My life is over. Who cares anymore?" The old man did, indeed. "I know that life can be cruel, but it can also be pleasant sometimes. I believe this is your lucky day." "How so?" the boy asked, he looked confused now. "I am working on a pill named Netronex, I have tested it on many people before. It takes away the mental pain. I have never met anyone reporting a side effect from it. I know that you have reservations about taking a pill from a stranger, but I am no stranger. Go to this newstand and buy this magazine."

The old man handed the boy some money and a piece of paper that had the name of the magazine, "Psychiatry Today." When the boy fetched the magazine, the old man started skimming through its pages to show the teenager an article. The boy looked at the picture near the article and recognized the face: "Wow, you are a professor in psychiatry!", the teenager exclaimed. "You know," the old man interrupted, "I will not push you to take this pill, but I will give it to you! It is all up to you now." The teenager reminisced about his suicidal thoughts and what he has said earlier - his life was over, what did he have to lose? Besides, the old man was clearly a renowned psychiatrist. Why would he trick him into a dangerous situation?

The boy took the capsule, pretending to read its markings to look as if he knew what he was doing, and swallowed it. "Good job!", the old man exclaimed. But the boy looked sadder than ever. "It feels like I have lost", he said, "lost my battle with life, by taking this pill. It means I am mentally weak and cannot do without a pill!" "Depression may cause someone to think that way", the old man explained in a formal and even somewhat cold manner. "That feeling will go away shortly."

The teenager and the old man talked for another 15 minutes, chatting about life, drugs, depression, and even women. "I am feeling better already!", the teenager said enthusiastically. About five minutes later, he couldn't stand still. "I am feeling great! I haven't felt this way for a long time!" The boy remembered the concert at his school, now he wanted to go and mingle with his peers. "Professor, I do not mean to be rude but, I have to go to the concert now. Thank you so much for your help. Maybe I have lost my battle with life, but I don't care about that anymore. Life has so much to offer." The boy shook hands with the old man and began running towards the bus stop, waving back to the old man. The old man took his Polaroid camera and took the teenager's picture. He placed the picture into an album that had tens of other happy photos of teenagers whom he has also given the pill in the past ten years.

The boy's bus finally arrived and disappeared behind the green hill. "You didn't lose your battle - all I did was to talk to you," the old man thought to himself, "The pill was empty."

The old man looked at the magazine once again to check out his twin brother's picture. "You always believed in the power of drugs", he thought. His twin brother was a world-renowned psychiatrist, unlike he who was an obscure psychologist who believed in talking to people to solve their problems rather than just prescribing a "simple pill." It was all "in the head", and chemicals were simply a tool for pharmaceutical companies to get rich. That is why the old man dedicated his life to proving that the pills were unnecessary, and more importantly, that his brother was wrong all along. His actions and methods were found questionable, of course, that was why he was disbarred from the Psychologists' Association. He did not care, he was right, and this boy was once again proof for that.

The concert was not as eventful as the boy hoped it would be. Nobody he knew, even remotely, showed up in the event. His mental pain was intolerable, and apparently, pills were not helping, either - even the newest one.

The old man was skimming through the newspaper on Tuesday. There was a news piece about a boy who took sleeping pills and committed suicide. As he looked at the nearby picture, the boy's face looked more and more familiar to him.