Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Five: Tej, Monday

Sunny got the call while they were having dinner, but he ignored it because he was raised well and he didn't answer the phone while he was at the dinner table. It was one of the things Tej loved about him, his combination of old world manners and new age liberalism that was rare to see in a lot of men; for example, he would open the door for her at the restaurant and hold out her chair for her, but he wouldn't order off the menu for her, instinctively knowing where she wanted her own agency. Still, she could tell he was curious about who was calling, and knew as soon as they finished eating and cleaning up, he'd be checking. 

She didn't think it would be a work matter, since he'd just come home from work as partner at Westminster Law Group, but there was always the possibility of an emergency from one of his clients, as his area was family law, and divorce and child custody issues didn't always arise between nine and five. It could have been a City Council matter, since he'd won a seat on Council in the recent election, and Tej was sure there was a lot of paperwork to read over and sign before his first swearing in.

"You're going to be away a lot in the evening," her mother-in-law said, as if she had intuited the purpose of the call as well. She had talked a lot about his new position since the night of the election. It was as if she had predicted he would lose, and now had to catch up with his new reality now that he'd won.

Sunny nodded. "That's when Council meetings happen. Tej will be here, though, and both of us are also reachable by phone."

"Your mother worries about me too much," her father-in-law said, smiling and patting her arm tenderly. "My dialysis appointments happen during the day, anyway, and Sunil and Tejinderpreet are always available to take us then."

One of them was, at least, and Tej refrained from mentioning it was usually her. It wasn't that Sunny wouldn't take them, it was just that his hours were more regular during the day, while hers could vary, since she was a real estate agent and could book her showings more flexibly. Since Sunny was their only living child, it fell to the daughter-in-law to shoulder the burden of care for the elder members of the family, and Tej had known that going in, but resentment about it still niggled at her from time to time.

"Yes, but medical emergencies happen more often at night than they do during the day," her mother-in-law said.

"If something happened," Sunny said, "I would run out of the meeting. They would understand if it was a family emergency."  

This seemed to mollify her mother-in-law, and she said no more about it, but suddenly Sunny said, "Dad, if you were offered a treatment that would cure your diabetes and fix your kidneys, would you take it knowing it would involve tiny little robots floating around in your bloodstream?"

Her father-in-law chewed thoughtfully for a few moments before responding, "That's a very interesting question, Sunil. Does this have to do with that Naira Sandhu woman, and the technology she was working on before she went on the run?"

"It does. She thought they weren't close enough to making that particular breakthrough, but recent developments make me suspect they might have been. Would this treatment violate our faith in any way, do you think? Perhaps the sanctity of the body?"

Her father-in-law chuckled and said, "I don't think the Gurus ever predicted tiny little machines fixing your body from the inside. If we consider it a medical treatment, our faith has no objection; we go to doctors when we are sick, do we not? We get vaccines against contagion, and we donate our blood to help our fellow man. This would be just one more aspect of medicine, albeit a new one, and if the proper testing was done, and the government agencies cleared it for public use, I see no reason for a Sikh to refuse it." 

"So, you'd get it, then."

Her father-in-law thought a little longer about it and shook his head. "My objection is pragmatic instead of religious. Look at me. I'm nearly eighty years old. How many years could I possibly have left?"