Excerpt from Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The kid spent the whole flight laid out on a gurney just across from Eden's. He was strapped down on his stomach, a big and humiliating piece of gauze stuck into his wound. My friend was burnt up so bad that the kid couldn't tell which way they'd strapped him to his gurney, on his front or on his back.

The kid was in pain but doing all right. He was on a solid morphine drip. What bothered him more than his wounds were the pair of nurses who talked too loud and the bright lights in the cabin. The lights were kept bright so open wounds could be seen clearly by the nurses. Still the lights kept the kid awake. My friend kept the kid awake too, trying to sleep next to someone as burnt up as him was like trying to sleep next to a box of poisonous snakes.

But knowing what type of a way Eden was in made the kid feel a bit better about the type of a way he was in. All along the docs had told the kid he wasn't too bad off. They'd even said once he got sewed up and put back together he'd be in no worse shape than someone who'd had a real bad hernia. The kid didn't buy that line, but on the plane, headed home and looking at my friend, he did start to feel a bit better.

During the flight, a male nurse came to check on the kid every couple of hours. The nurse made sure he was comfortable and looked over his bandages and vitals. About halfway home, the C-17 landed at Ramstein Air Force Base to refuel. That's when the male nurse, the one who'd been looking after the kid, got off the plane. Once they got back in the air a different nurse, a young one who was also watching Eden, came by to check on the kid.

"You're looking all right," she said.

"You know it," replied the kid, and he gave her a flirty smile. She had good dark skin and her black hair was pulled tightly into a bun.

"Your ass is seeping a bit," said the young nurse. "Get some sleep. I'll change you before we land." She covered him with a blanket.

The kid didn't say anything. He pushed the button on his clicker for another shot from his morphine drip. He didn't want to look at her anymore so he turned his head back to the bulkhead, trying to sleep.

Then the young nurse went to check on Eden. When she stood over him, he was shuddering on his gurney. She read his temperature. It was high, dangerously so. His skin, already see-through with burns, didn't sweat, it couldn't. Instead it shined, the fever trapped inside. The second, older nurse came over. As she did, his body seized and then did a sort of whip-crack, struggling for breath even as he gasped. Without speaking, the older nurse ran to the refrigerator at the front of the plane. That's where they kept the blood.

The two nurses worked together searching for a place to transfuse the blood into my friend. Their movements were mechanical and silent. Their hands raced unfamiliarly over his body not recognizing the places where they could usually find enough vein for a needle. Soon the young nurse found a soft patch of skin on his side. She flicked the skin with her finger. Slowly it turned red as a sunburn. Then, beneath the red, she found a dark and lurking vein. She angled the needle to the vein and lanced it in, hooking up the tubing. Blood barely trickled through. It met great resistance and didn't flow as it should. Instead it percolated like the last drips of coffee from a machine. His body was shutting down, rejecting what was offered it. Still the nurses kept up their work, massaging the bag of blood, fighting off the collapse of his veins as if the transfused red and white cells were a squad of workmen desperately jointing the rafters of a house ready to fall in on itself. Then slowly the bag began to empty into his body. And through hydraulics my friend stayed alive.

Over Eden, the two nurses took up a vigil. The older nurse stood at the head of his bed. She massaged the bag of blood. The younger nurse stood at his side. She kept the thick needle in place, pressing it to his skin. Inside him, the needle's beveled point held to the single and narrow vein like a climber with too few fingers on a ledge.

Excerpted from Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman. Copyright © 2018 by Elliot Ackerman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.