307. The Yul Interview (Part 1)

Interview with Yul (from Earth)

T: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us this morning.

Y: No problem. What's up?

T: I wanted to ask you about the time when Rog returned from the mission to rescue Bravo and--(notices strange look on Yul's face). What?

Y: Go on.

T: You sure? You seem--

Y: Like a girl in the bathroom who hears a door open and a stranger walks in?

T: (smiles) Well, more like a girl in the bathroom who sees the stranger and doesn't break eye contact but instead sits upright, chest out, eyes wide, lips slightly parted with a Mona Lisa smile.

Y: (laughs out loud) You know, I would frail you, how do you say it, just to be clear, and I would frail you right now (Yul seductively slides her spear-like blue tongue over her glistening upper lip, and her eyelashes, or so it seemed, swayed like palm trees in a gently breeze, glimmering and sparkling like the surface of the turquoise ocean they guarded and longed to reach.). What do you say? Be our little secret. Rog doesn't have to know.

T: You know, you don't really have to try so hard (deliberate pause), to avoid the subject. Just say you'd rather not discuss the matter. I understand if you don't (shifts position).

Y: (laughs again, her eyes dropping, starring) Seems I'm not the one avoiding the question (winks). It's getting a little warm. Do you mind if I take my shirt off? (starts to unzip her blouse, slowly, tilting her head without breaking eye contact)

T: (stares at her perfectly polished nails delicately and slowly pulling his eyes south with the metal enclosure, the valley of her feminine charm, fertile as fields before mountains, opening as flowers on the dawn, only the lush green replaced with an exotic, mysterious blue cast)

Y: (with a slight pout) The zipper seems to be stuck. Would you be so kind as to assist.

T: (smiles wide) Yul, perhaps we should continue this interview another time.

Y: Another time, yes (pulls the zipper back up). Now, what was your question?

T: You sure you want to do this?

Y: Oh, I want to do this. The question is, do you?

T: You're enjoying this, aren't you?

Y: Like a cat with a ball of yarn. But I am making (drops her tone), things difficult for you.

T: No, not at all.

Y: Really? (looks down) To get the truth you must be willing to give it.

T: (turns to his aide) Turn the camera off and leave us.

Y: Thank you.

T: Do you want to interview or frail?

Y: Why does it have to either/or?

T: (bursts out laughing) Touché.

Y: Business before pleasure. Ask your first question.

T: After the operation, when you woke and you knew you were still alive, walk me through what you felt, what went through your mind.

Y: (sighs) You really know how to turn a girl on don't you (her eyes water and her lids drop; she reaches out and touches his arm with her nails).

T: We can stop at anytime?

Y: No, I want to answer this question. Just not easy to go back there. Sometimes the past is best left in the past.

T: Easier said than done.

Y: True. Pain. That was the first thing I remember, the intense pain. I learned later their pain meds didn't quite work as they should on our alien nerve centers. Every movement hurt. Breathing hurt. Laughing hurt. Lifting my head hurt. Moving my arm hurt. But none of those things hurt as much as waking up, in that white room, alone.

T: Was Mairi not there?

Y: No. After the operation, she went back to her quarters to get cleaned up, to recover, and I suppose that is when Trev appeared. At the time I didn't know why Mairi was not there. I had no idea the trouble Trev had gotten himself in nor the extreme guilt Mairi felt, undeservedly, in my opinion, but then again, who am I to judge the burden another picks up, right? (laughs)

T: Can you describe the loneliness?

Y: You're alive. A miracle has occurred. And you want to die. As painful as the surgery was, it was the moon to the sun of my mental torment. I suppose I was primed to feel sorry for myself. As I think you know, I was never "the one." My sister (Yul pauses), can we take a break?

T: Sure.

Y: (wipes her eyes) Never mind, I'll push ahead. My sister was the one. She got everything. I was passed over so many times, the scars, well, if I told you even today they were completely healed, I would by lying. So when I woke up and there was no one there, well, I slipped into an emotional free fall. Not exactly what the doctors wanted to see.

T: Keep going.

Y: (takes a deep breath) I knew Rog had made a choice to be elsewhere but I was not expecting neither Mairi nor Trev to be absent. I was angry, resentful, bitter, scared. I didn't understand why they weren't. I mean, how could they not be there! Frail, for Janus' sake. How could they not be there! So you want to know what I felt. I felt frailing pain like you will never understand. Think of it this way. Imagine you walk into a bank and you present your life as a deposit and the banker looks over your portfolio and starts laughing. You ask him why he is laughing and he says there is nothing here. Imagine that. Your life is deemed worthless by those who know you best. You are on your deathbed and your lover leaves you. You go under the knife and when you wake your other two friends are not there. Do you have any idea, any frailing idea what it is like to wake in an alien hospital, attended to by aliens, your mind is drugged, you are disoriented, in pain, severe physical pain and they are whispering in a language you can't understand while taking sideways glances at you, and there you are, rejected again, abandoned again, told, not with words, but with actions, that you don't count. You want to know what went through my mind? I'll frailing tell you. I thought of Mairi and Trev sitting in the sun having a leisurely breakfast and talking nonsense about what they were going to do that day without my name ever coming up. And then I thought about Rog, jacking off, and you know what. He wasn't thinking about me. He was thinking about Kyra, about Em, in his quarters, wailing away. That's what I frailing thought. And then I thought, frail them all. Just frailing frail them all. You know what I mean?

T: I had no idea.

Y: (Yul looked at him hard) Frail you.

T: Pardon?

Y: I don't need your false sympathy. If you want to continue this interview I need you to be real, just speak the truth, otherwise we've got nowhere to go.

T: (sighs) Look, I understand the events, the time line. I meant I have no idea what it must have been like to be you at that point, not that I didn't know there was pain.

Y: Oh, my bad. Won't be the last time I put my foot in my mouth. Promise. Make it up to you later.

T: Don't worry about it. So when did you know Rog was on his way to see you?

Y: About five minutes before he walked in the door but I don't think that is what you're asking is it.

T: Not really.

Y: Since the moment I slammed the phone against the wall and broke it into a thousand pieces, all I could think about was that moment when he returned and what I would say. Keep in mind, I had ample time prior to the operation to stew and mull and that soup burned under the blazing fire of eminent death. Not even Mairi knew she was capable of pulling off what she did. I could see the look in her eyes, same for the doctors. There was no light, no hope. The surgery, at best, was going to be a living autopsy. I was their plaything. Not of their kind. What the frail did they care whether I lived or died. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn they looked eager to open me up. Anyway, so before the operation, my emotions were running so strong, not thinking, but knowing I was going to die, and I was obsessed with how I could somehow pay that little frailer back for abandoning me. I mean what the frail. I'm frailing dying and he runs off to save someone else. Stop and think about that for a second. Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel?

(to be continued)