Chapter Three - Med Time is God Time

CHAPTER THREE

Med Time is God Time

TWICE A DAY, everything stops.

A cart rolls out from the nurse’s station. It creaks as it moves. There’s a clipboard, a scanner, and a small locked box. Behind it stands the dispenser — sometimes a nurse, sometimes a tech, always holding the power of sedation in a paper cup.

You line up.

They call your name.
They scan your wristband.
They hand you pills.
They watch you swallow.

You open your mouth. You lift your tongue. You prove you’ve complied.

You ask what they are — the green one, the white one, the new one — and sometimes they’ll tell you. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they say, “It’s for anxiety,” or “That’s just your mood stabilizer.” The names blur. The dosages change. But the ritual stays the same.

Some people don’t ask anymore.

Some people refuse.

Refusing isn’t simple. If you say no, you’ll be marked noncompliant. It’ll go in your chart. It’ll come up in your review. You might be spoken to. You might be pressured. You might be isolated. You might be injected.

There are forms of force that don’t leave bruises.

Med time isn’t just about treatment — it’s about control. A calm unit is a compliant unit. A medicated patient is a manageable patient. Whether or not you’re better is secondary. What matters is whether you’re stable.

And here, stable means sedated.

The sleepy haze, the flat affect, the slow speech — these are signs that the system is working. Progress is measured in silence. Peace is pharmacological. You don’t get better. You get quieter.

You learn to take the cup without looking.
You learn to swallow without thinking.
You learn not to say how it makes you feel.

Because med time is God time.

And in the asylum, God doesn’t take questions.