For a time Karras watched as the bellowing continued; then he looked at his hand and walked out of the room.
Chris pushed herself quickly away from the wall, glancing, with distress at the Jesuit's sweater. 'What happened? Did she vomit?'
'Got a towel?' he asked her.
'There's a bathroom right there!' she said hurriedly, pointing at a hallway door. 'Karl, take a look at her!' she instructed, and followed the priest to the bathroom.
'I'm so sorry!' she exclaimed in agitation, whipping a towel off the bar. The Jesuit moved to the washbasin.
'Have you got her on tranquilizers?' he asked.
Chris turned on the water taps. 'Yes, Librium. Here, take off that sweater and then you can wash.'
'What dosage?' he asked her, tugging at the sweater -with his clean left hand.
'Here, I'll help you.' She pulled at the sweater from the bottom. 'Well, today she's had four hundred milligrams, Father.'
'Four hundred?'
She had the sweater pulled up to his chest 'Yeah, that's how we got her into those straps. It took all of us together to---'
'You gave your daughter four hundred milligrams at once?'
'C'mon, get your arms up, Father.' He raised them and she tugged delicately. 'She's so strong you can't believe it.'
She pulled back the shower curtain, tossing the sweater into the tub. 'I'll have Willie get it cleaned for you, Father. I'm sorry.'
'Never mind. It doesn't matter.' He unbuttoned the right sleeve of his starched white shirt and rolled it up, exposing a matting of fine brown hairs on a bulging, thickly muscled forearm.
'I'm sorry,' Chris repeated quietly, slowly sitting down on the edge of the tub.
'Is she taking any nourishment at all?' asked Karras. He held his hand beneath the hot-water tap to rinse away the vomit.
She clutched and unclutched the towel. It was pink, the name Regan embroidered in blue. 'No, Father. Just Sustagen when she's been sleeping. Bu she ripped out the tubing.'
'Ripped it out?'
'Today.'
Disturbed, Karras soaped and rinsed his hands, and after a pause said gravely, 'She ought to be in a hospital.'
'I just can't do that,' answered Chris in a toneless voice.
'Why not?'
'I just can't!' she repeated with quavering anxiety. 'I can't have anyone else involved! She's...' Chris- dropped her head. Inhaled. Exhaled. 'She s done something, Father. I can't take the risk of someone else finding out. Not a doctor... not a nurse...' She looked up. 'Not anyone.'
Frowning, he turned off the taps. '... What if a person, let's say, was a criminal...' He lowered his head, staring down at the basin. 'Who's giving her the Sustagen? the Librium? her medicines?'
'We are. Her doctor showed us how.'
'You need prescriptions.'
'Well, you can do some of that, can't you, Father?'
Karras turned to her, hands upraised above the basin like a surgeon after washup. For a moment he met her haunted gaze, felt some terrible secret in them, some dread. He nodded at the towel in her hands. She stared blankly. 'Towel, please,' he said softly.
'Oh, I'm sorry!' Very quickly, she fumbled it out to him, still watching him with a tight expectancy. The Jesuit dried his hands. 'Well, Father, what's it look like?' Chris finally asked him. 'Do you think she's possessed?'
'Do you?'
'I don't know. I thought you were the expert.'
'How much do you know about possession?'
'Just a little that I've read. Some things that the doctors told me.'
'What doctors?'
'At Barringer Clinic.'
He folded the towel and carefully draped it over the bar. 'Are you Catholic?'
'No.'
'Your daughter?'
'No.'
