“I try to focus on the positive,” Adam tells me. His body leans forward in the chair as if his thin frame will add heft to a statement that his eyes don’t support. “I’m fine.”

Outside my office windows, the campus sits brown and empty. Late fall is the only time of year when northern Utah loses its beauty. Snow has not yet covered the mountains that rise all around us. Bereft of leaves and birds, they huddle closer to the ground. The semester has hit the same brown patch as the season, far from the beginning but not close enough to the end to count. The radiator bangs to life, pinging like a mechanical heart.