Page 60 of Strays
She glances back at the tomatoes and resumes cutting, but when she finally answers, her voice is a little shaky. “Actually… Dr. Lindstrom called me in. Said he has to talk to Legal and see how the hospital wants to proceed.”
We all go still.
She sighs. “But he was polite about it. Very… corporate.”
“We fight this,” Shane says immediately.
“Only if I need to,” she replies, voice even weaker. “I don’t want to start a lawsuit. That could ruin my career. Back in college, my dad hired a lawyer when I told what I was, but he didn’t even have to do anything. The faculty realized they had no grounds to expel me. I think now it can go the same way, so I’ll wait. If they really try to take my job, then I’ll get a lawyer, but until that happens, I’ll just keep my head down.”
I step closer to her. “How are you? For real.”
She blinks quickly. “I’m fine. I mean… people get weird. Then they calm down. It just takes time.”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” Shane says, still stirring the sauce like she taught him.
“No. But if I let myself think that way, I won’t be able to function.” Her voice is barely a whisper now. “I just want to keep my job. And not lose my friends. That’s all.”
Jay moves in closer too. “We’ll help however you need. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“I know.” She exhales. “I just hate that bonding with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and the worst at the same time.”
Even with everything she’s going through, my chest jolts with joy hearing her say that about our bond. “Then we’ll do everything we can to change that second part,” I reply, smiling.
After dinner, we take turns showering. Shane goes first, while the rest of us use the time to dive into the remaining boxes. Jo’s the last one to go.
My brothers and I keep unpacking, but the second that distinct spice note in her scent hits, the one that means she’s turned on, we wrap up fast and head straight for the nest.
Response to “Species and Civilization: Reexamining Gregalis–Human Coevolution” by M. A. Norwood
Excerpt from Steve Bureau, Journal of Applied Sociobiology, 29(4), 2020, pp. 201–207.
It is with equal parts academic concern and professional obligation that I respond to the recent publication by Dr. Malcolm A. Norwood, an anthropologist by training, whose article on Homo gregalis reflects a growing trend of speculative commentary in a field in which the author holds no formal expertise: comparative biology.
Dr. Norwood’s central thesis — that the gregalis species failed to produce independent civilization not because of biological limitation, but because of historical human suppression — is both ahistorical and biologically unfounded.
What Dr. Norwood fails to consider is the broader picture. Every instance of rudimentary agriculture, symbolic etching, or spatial planning associated with gregalis populations originates from settlements established adjacent to, or within, larger human communities. In each case, the pattern is consistent: gregalis imitation of human structures, human tools, human systems.
This is not to say that gregalis evolution lacks distinction. Their ability to identify, remain close to, and adapt alongside the more advanced species is, in itself, a remarkable evolutionary strategy.
It is far more honest, and frankly more respectful, to give them credit for the strengths they did develop than to fabricate those they did not.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bittersweet
In the weeks that follow, our new life starts to feel real, but I still catch stunned looks on my brothers’ faces sometimes. Just for a second, like everything still feels too good to be true. I’m sure they see the same in mine.
We fall into a solid routine. Every morning, we wake up with Jo and make her breakfast while she gets ready for work. In the afternoons, when we get home, we have a couple of hours of lazy downtime before she returns. Then we cook together while she tells us about her shift and asks us about ours. After dinner, we shower, and every night ends the same: the three of us hungrily waiting for her in the nest.
But threaded through the happiness of our home life is the shadow of what she’s going through at work.
The shift at the hospital has been brutal. It’s not just gossip anymore; it’s the silence in the break room when she walks in, the way conversations pause mid-sentence and never resume. Some of her colleagues won’t meet her eyes. Others speak to her with exaggerated politeness, like they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, or anything at all.
She’s patched things up with Jenna and Kacy, her closest friends at the hospital, but even with them, there’s a stiffness, like they’re still recalibrating who she is and they’re not sure how to treat her anymore.
But with others, it’s way worse. She told us one of the attending physicians has started double-checking every chart she signs, even when she follows protocol to the letter. Nurses have begun to “mistakenly” reroute consults to other residents.
It’s like the moment people found out she wasn’t human, they stopped believing she could be a doctor, as if the years she spent studying and sacrificing meant nothing.
