Nelson Wright, a medical student, walks onto a beach one day and proclaims “today is a good day to die”. He later convinces four of his medical school classmates—Joe Hurley, David Labraccio, Randy Steckle, and Rachel Manus—to help him discover what lies beyond death. Nelson flatlines for one minute before his classmates resuscitate him. While "dead", he experiences a sort of afterlife. He sees a vision of a boy he bullied as a child, Billy Mahoney. He merely tells his friends that he cannot describe what he saw, but something is there. The others follow Nelson's daring feat.