Excerpt from The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Everything in my room might have come from an upmarket-hospital-room catalogue. I don't doubt that the other rooms are furnished the same: hospital bed, wardrobe with full-length mirror, desk, large-screen TV attached to the wall and two easy chairs facing each other in front of the window as though I might be allowed to receive visitors and offer them coffee. And to my right a door leads through to a tiled shower room.

"I need to go over some things with you," the nurse says. She unconsciously turns the gold band on her wedding-ring finger. "And then I'll leave you to unpack. You can take off your mask if you like. Volunteers don't need to wear one."

"Okay," I say. I've read through the "what to expect" email many times. My phone pings again as I remove my mask.

"Do you want to look at that?" As though suddenly conscious of her habit, she lets go of her wedding ring.

"No, it's fine." I'm here now, I don't care what Justin and Mum are telling me to do or not to do.

"You just have one case?" The nurse's nametag says "Boosri" and when she sees me looking, she says, "You can call me Boo."

"I don't need much," I say. The wheeled suitcase is an old one which Mum bought for my first solo trip to visit my father—Baba—in Greece, the summer I turned twelve. Before that, Baba had bought plane tickets for her and for me, and Mum would travel with me, handing me and one of her old suitcases over to Margot at Corfu Arrivals with hardly a word spoken. I would be embarrassed on Mum's behalf, fidgeting while she hugged and kissed me and tidied my collar, which wasn't untidy. I never turned to look at her as I skipped out into the wall of Greek heat with Margot; never once thought about what it must have been like for her to walk straight back into Departures and catch the next plane home to England, alone. When I was twelve either Mum decided I could do the trip alone, supervised by a cabin attendant, or maybe Baba questioned why he was buying two tickets when one would do.

Boo takes a screen from a wide pocket in her uniform, taps to wake it up. "So, I need to check, you don't have alcohol in your bag?" I shake my head. "No cigarettes, no tobacco?"

"No."

"No drugs, prescription or anything else, except birth-control pills? No food of any kind? Sweets, snacks? Coffee, tea?"

I shake my head at each item.

She asks me to read the disclaimer one last time and indicates where I should sign with the stylus. I skim the information and scrawl a signature. She scans the barcode on a white wristband and has me confirm my name and date of birth, and then attaches it to my right wrist. She asks if I've had any symptoms in the last five days, and she lists them. "No," I answer to each one. Have I kept myself isolated, apart from contact with my immediate household in the last seven days? "Yes." I haven't been near anyone except Justin for more than a week.

Boo snaps on a pair of blue plastic gloves and swabs the back of my nose. I can't help but pull away and she apologizes. "This will be tested overnight to make sure you're not asymptomatic." She puts it in a plastic tube, labels it, tucks it back into her pocket. "The doses of the vaccine will be given in staggered intervals," she explains. "You're in the first group, tomorrow afternoon. Okay?"

She shows me how to turn on the television and how to lower and raise the blinds on the external window using the voice service, and she explains that the venetian blind on the interior window which overlooks the corridor must always remain up, even at night, and she tells me how to access the alarms in the bedroom and the shower room.

"Mike will bring your dinner at seven. Vegetarian, yes?" She has hold of her wedding ring again even through the gloves.

"Yes, thanks."

"If I can get you anything else, let me know." I realize she hasn't touched anything in the room. "I'll see you in the morning."

Excerpted from The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller. Copyright © 2023 by Claire Fuller. Excerpted by permission of Tin House Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.