NEW YORK -- A year ago, Corina Morariu watched the U.S. Open wearing a pale blue bandana and a rueful smile.

	Corina Morariu admitted that she would have liked a better draw than Serena Williams.

The bandana covered a head left bare by the ravages of chemotherapy. The smile? It failed to cover a gaunt soul shaken by a struggle with acute promyeloctic leukemia. After the second day of the 2001 Open, she reluctantly flew back to Florida for her third round of chemotherapy.

On Monday night, Morariu was back on the court at the National Tennis Center, against formidable odds.

"At this time last year ... I didn't think I'd ever be back here," Morariu said, her voice quavering. "I get emotional just talking about it. I'm sorry."

Her eyes filled with tears, but the smile never left her face.

"There are days when you feel so bad and things get so difficult that you don't think you're going to be able to do the things that you used to be able to do," she said. "For me to be back here and play tonight, it was obviously very emotional and a really special feeling."

The 12-month transformation was startling: Gone was the bandana, a cap of mahogany ringlets in its place. She was pink-cheeked and robust -- the very picture of glowing health.

"What really surprises me is how great she looks physically," said Lindsay Davenport, a former doubles partner. "If you look at her body now, she looks just as strong as before she left. I remember being here at The Open last year and she had no muscle, obviously had no hair, was very frail. You see her now, it almost seems like that didn't really happen to her last year.

"It's really amazing."

Quite so. In a world of daily disasters, Morariu represents a minor miracle that helps to confirm our faith in the post-September 11 landscape. On a night when the United States Tennis Association celebrated New York's uniformed heroes, Morariu, 24, was embraced by the notoriously raucous crowd at Flushing.

That she happened to play only her second match in 14 months in a well-populated Arthur Ashe Stadium, against the best player in the world, with a prime-time national audience was irrelevant. That she hung in there for 69 minutes against Serena Williams -- 25 minutes longer than Anna Kournikova lasted against Angelique Widjaja -- in losing 6-2, 6-3 is of little consequence.

Here is what is important in Morariu's life:

Two hours before her Monday night match, her father Albin, a physician, called. The results of her quarterly bone marrow test were in.

"The cancer is still in remission," Morariu said, "so that is the best reason to celebrate for today."

	“	I was so concentrated for eight or nine months on living and fighting the disease. Then I sort of got the news that my treatment was over. It was time to move on. I didn't really know what to do at that stage. I wrestled with it for about a month, six weeks. When you have a hard time walking up the stairs in your house, it's tough to imagine that you're ever going to be able to play or compete with Serena Williams. ”
		— Corina Morariu

It was back in May 2001, when Morariu sprained her right foot at the German Open. In retrospect, it was the most fortuitous injury of her career. The Detroit native had been feeling unusually tired and decided to withdraw from the Rome tournament the following week. Within a week, she was diagnosed with a potentially lethal strain of leukemia.

For the next eight months, she battled -- for more than half of that campaign she fought from a hospital bed. She lost about 15 pounds from her 130-pound frame and there were times when she wasn't sure if she would be breathing in 2002, much less playing tennis.

But she rallied, as it were, and suddenly tennis was back on the table.

"I was so concentrated for eight or nine months on living and fighting the disease," she said. "Then I sort of got the news that my treatment was over. It was time to move on. I didn't really know what to do at that stage.

"I wrestled with it for about a month, six weeks. When you have a hard time walking up the stairs in your house, it's tough to imagine that you're ever going to be able to play or compete with Serena Williams."

The steps have been small. The comeback started with a five-minute walk (that was all she could manage at first), and soon graduated to modest hitting sessions. Her first competitive action came a month ago in San Diego, where she played doubles with Kimberly Po-Messerli. They lost in the first round, but she was encouraged. She received a singles wild card a week later in Los Angeles and was leading Marie-Gaianeh Mikaelian 4-1 in the third set but wound up losing. She and Po-Messerli, however, reached the doubles semifinals before losing to eventual champions Kim Clijsters and Jelena Dokic.

Since her WTA Tour ranking has lapsed, she has been given a special ranking that will allow her to enter eight tournaments, plus three wild cards. The USTA was generous enough to extend her a wild card for the Open but couldn't have imagined that of all her possible draws it would be the tournament's No. 1 seed.

"Obviously, I think I probably would have liked a better draw in my first Grand Slam back," Morariu said, pausing to laugh. "I'm not going to lie to you about that."

In truth, at least initially, Williams was rustier than Morariu. She sprayed shots all over the place and made numerous errors, mostly of the unforced kind.

"Rusty," Williams said, "very, very rusty."

Just after the match, Williams said she "felt bad to have to play her," but later she backtracked a tad.

Was it difficult, under the circumstances, to play Morariu?

	“	She's been amazing the whole time I've been sick. We talked in L.A. when I saw her first a few weeks ago. She's been very supportive. ”
		— Corina Morariu on Serena Williams

"Not in a Grand Slam, no," Williams said. "You just have to kind of brush it aside. Unfortunately, it's like this: It's like animals out here on the court. But off the court it's a different story."

In fact, Williams was one of Morariu's biggest supporters. Along with sister Venus, she kept in touch by phone and sent several gifts.

"She's been amazing the whole time I've been sick," Morariu said. "We talked in L.A. when I saw her first a few weeks ago. She's been very supportive."

It almost was if Williams was afraid to embarrass Morariu. Instead, she nearly embarrassed herself.

Morariu had several opportunities to stay even in the first set but converted only one of three break-point opportunities. She broke Williams to open the second set, but she failed to hold serve in the second game. Likewise, she had an opportunity to make it 4-4, but a double fault gave Williams an insurmountable 5-3 lead.

"I'm a little disappointed, but I need matches and I need that experience," Morariu said. "Overall, I got to look at the big picture, and I am happy to be back. I'm healthy and I'm out there hitting balls and I'm not doing too poorly on the court.

"It's a great feeling to have something to aim for, to have a purpose and something to do and something I was passionate about. That's played a big part. Now I'm starting a whole new journey playing again. This is what I decided to do."

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.