Chapter 1

Brody Stockton knocked on the closed door to his roommate’s room. “Liam?”

There was no answer.

He knocked again, worried. The past few weeks, Liam Martin had seemed to be slipping further and further into himself, spending his days hitting the books or rushing off to class, his nights interning at the Henrico Doctor’s Hospital emergency room. This was Liam’s last year of medical school, but he never seemed to let loose, have any fun. Brody shared the house with two other students—Liam and Adam Corsica—and of the three of them, only Liam seemed overwhelmed. With his internship, with clinicals, with his course load, not to mention the part-time job he had running a short-order grill at Patterson Deli on weekends. The guy neverslowed down!

Everything was work with Liam—he had to do this, he had to do that, and Brody was beginning to suspect the sheer weight of Liam’s life was wearing him down. He hadn’t seen Liam smile in days, and he hated the dull shine in Liam’s eyes, the way Liam didn’t seem to live so much as to just exist anymore. Brody had a feeling Liam was in his room right now, sleeping away a perfectly good Friday afternoon just because his anatomy lab at MCV had been cancelled.

“Liam?” he called again, this time trying the doorknob.

It turned easily in his hand.

Cautiously he pushed the door open. “Hey, man,” he said, stepping inside the darkened room. “You in here?”

From the bed came an annoyed sigh. Liam was on his back, staring at the ceiling. In the dark,Brody thought. That’s not a good sign.

“What do you want?” Liam asked. He sounded terribly bored.

“Just checking on you.” Brody left the door open a crack as he navigated around piles of dirty laundry that littered the floor. Coming to stand by the bed, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and frowned down at his friend. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Liam countered. Before Brody could respond, he sighed and muttered, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Brody sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced around the room.

The place was a mess—clothes everywhere, papers and books scattered along the floor, soda bottles crushed into overflowing trash cans…and it was quiet, tooquiet. The radio was silent, the clock on the display blinking 12:00 because Liam never bothered to set the correct time.

Turning his attention to the disheveled bed, Brody frowned at his roommate. Liam’s shaggy hair looked like dark ink spilled across his rumpled pillow. His usually warm, large eyes were half-closed in obvious exhaustion, wide circles like bruises marring the pale skin beneath them. His ruddy lips were chapped from the nervous way he had of chewing on them while studying. He looked too thin, too pale, and too worn out—or worn down—to bother doing anything about it.

“What’s wrong?” Brody ventured.

Liam sighed again. “Nothing’s wrong,Brody.”

Why didn’t Brody believe that?

“I’m just…I don’t know. I’m tired, okay? I’m not like the rest of you guys, always partying and hanging out and having fun. Lab class is my fun time—”

Brody grimaced. “Dissecting animals and picking apart dead bodies is your idea of fun? What the hell kind of warped childhood did youhave?”

In the light cast through the open door from the hallway, Brody saw Liam glare at him. “They’re called cadavers. And if we didn’t study them, we’d know nothing about the human body. Doctors wouldn’t be able to do their jobs if we didn’t—“

“Down, boy,” Brody joked. “I’m teasing, so lighten up. I know you think you’re sacrificing your youth for the good of mankind but seriously, dude, you need to unwind sometimes. Even God took a day off after creating the world.”

Liam sighed. “Don’t get started on religion, please. Every time my mother calls, she wants to know when the last time I went to synagogue was.”

“Hey, I don’t even go to church,” Brody reminded him. “I’m just saying maybe you’re spending too much time studying and working. College is supposed to be fun.”

“Undergrad was fun.” Liam sighed again, a despondent sound. “Grad school was fun, more or less. Medical school is hell on earth.”

Brody grinned. “See? There you go. You need to take a breather, man.”

“Maybe I will,” Liam admitted, his voice low in the darkness. Brody’s grin widened, until Liam added, “When this semester’s done, maybe I’ll just take a few days—”

“You need to loosen up now,” Brody said with a laugh. “You’re scaring me, Liam. It ain’t healthy doing the shit you do.”

With a faint smile, Liam asked, “What is it I do?”

Brody shrugged. “You know what I mean. You’re wearing yourself thin. Sooner or later you’re going to bottom out and keel over as dead as those cadaversyou play around with all the time.”

An edge hardened Liam’s voice. “I don’t play aroundwith them. It’s something I have to do if I want to get my medical degree.”

“It’s gross, either way,” Brody admitted. “I’m just saying I don’t like you like this. I want you happy now, not in three months. I want the old Liam back. The guy I met two semesters ago when you first answered the ad I put on Craigslist for a new roomie.”

Liam stared at him for a long moment before returning his gaze to his contemplation of the ceiling. “Maybe he’s gone,” he said softly. “Maybe he’s grown up and all you have is me now.”

“Oh God, no,” Brody groaned. “You’re not grown up, you’re half-dead.”

Liam grinned at that. “I’m the one in med school, remember. I’m qualified to pronounce someone dead—or half-dead—not you. What’s your major again? Philosophy?”

“Film,” Brody reminded him. “It’s in the English department. Don’t get all high and mighty with me. I’ll be the next Steven Spielberg—“

Liam cut him off. “And I’ll be the one who saves your drunk ass when you finally wreck your car after one too many nights out partying.”

Brody didn’t see anything wrong with being drunk or partying. Slapping his hand on Liam’s bed to get his roommate’s attention, he suggested, “Let’s do something fun tonight, something like that. What do you say? Something you wouldn’t normally do. Maybe you’re just stuck in a rut—you said yourself you needed something new.”

“Like what?” Liam wanted to know.