Frasier pushed his foot down on the accelerator of his BMW. The engine came to life; a low rumble filling the empty street, and reverberating back into the upholstery. It shook his very foundation and he closed his eyes for a moment, imaging the median only inches away from the tires, the headlights illuminating the yellow slashes, the road only existing within their glare, otherwise a dark expanse of nothingness, impossible to discern and delineate. The blaring horn caused him to pull the car back into his own lane and a small red sedan shot past him in the opposite direction.
"Damn it," He swore. He didn't want to hear Vivaldi tonight and he ejected the tape from the player. The station was set to seventies throw back Sunday, and "Boogie Nights" was playing. He rolled his eyes and his left hand slipped from the wheel. It was hard to hold his head up and he thought it would be so easy to just to close his eyes again, but her image swam into focus every time he tried and he groaned and forced his focus back on the road. Diane. Diane at the bar. Diane with Sam. He wanted to spin the wheel to the right. He wanted to feel the momentum and the force as he changed the direction of his BMW so swiftly that the tires would lose traction. He wanted to go head first into that tree row, and every time he closed his eyes he hoped it would happen. He didn't have the strength or the resolve to actually perform the action. His head hurt and he knew it was a miracle he was still awake. How many glasses of wine had he downed with those three Benzodiazepines?
The headlights made everything slow and soft, even though the speedometer read eighty. He pushed his toe a little harder against the pedal, the engine purring again and the needle hitching to 85. He liked the feeling, the power he possessed over this machine, two tons of metal and he wanted to push its limit, but the idea, even the ability to apply that much more pressure to the pedal was tiring.
He leant his head back and his foot eased from the pedal. He closed his eyes and kept one hand on the wheel. He didn't want to think of Diane. He wanted nothing but to forget her, but she swam from the blackness and he could smell her Chanel number five that he bought her for Christmas and had given to her at the ski lodge. He remembered the French they spoke together on Sundays, how atrocious her pronunciation was, but how it made him feel something, made him want her, for all her imperfections, for her naiveté and self-confidence. How he couldn't bring himself to correct her, because he didn't want to hurt her in anyway. He was floating, doing cartwheels in his head over and over, like in Seattle twenty years ago, Niles hugging his arm on the tilt-to-whirl. His little brother hiding his face against Frasier's arm. He thinks he should call Niles. It's been too long since he'd spoken to his little brother. He opened his eyes as his BMW hit the gravel on the side of the road and somehow his foot found the brake. The tires screeched against the road and he swerved back across the median and then into his own lane. The car came to a stop half on and off of the shoulder.
Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew something was wrong, but he couldn't feel anything and his medical school training issued in thick dense globs of thought, word for word, dredged from some recess of late night studying things of importance, and finally he closed his eyes. Those lines not in his own voice, but in Diane's issued through his mind and he didn't know if he was asleep, but her voice kept him company, reiterating over and over again the symptoms of suicidal ideation: thoughts serving the agent of one's own death- manifested from transient thoughts with respect to the worthlessness of life and death- to permanent, concrete plans for killing oneself and obsessive preoccupation with self-destruction. May be an aspect of depressed mood- a coping strategy- hopelessness- habitual or chronic as well as of an acute nature- and her voice dropped away and found a new topic- depression, depersonalization self-destruction. Looping, looping, so that none of it made sense and he couldn't process anything, but the cadence of her voice; the rise and fall as the words fell away and it all boiled down to Diane.