the body repossessed, on the three-hour clock
When he finally returned for his sophomore year of class and junior year of ball at seventeen and 284 lbs., Gately was enervated, flabby, apparently narcoleptic, and on a need-schedule so inflexible that he needed 15 mg. of good old oxycodone hydrochloride out of his pocket's Tylenol bottle every three hours to keep the shakes off.
Context
The 4.4-forty prodigy comes back at 284 pounds on a fixed three-hour oxycodone clock, the pills carried in a decoy Tylenol bottle, the dose calibrated not to get high but "to keep the shakes off" — maintenance, not pleasure, the terminal stage where the drug only buys you back to baseline. The indestructible head is now a huge confused kitten on the field; the disease has finished repossessing the gift, and the need-schedule is the only schedule left.