I am Indian! For those people that asked.

DISCLAIMER: Adapted from Paullina Simon's The Girl in Times Square. A beautiful, beautiful novel. So, this is Paullina Simons, with a smidge of me.

Two bouts of luck, one bad and one good. Bad? I have cancer. Good? I won the lottery. A weird twist of fate, I thought bitterly.

I was past the tears, the chemotherapy, and the horrible, horrible nausea and vomiting. The soldiers who had been marching toward my heart, breathing with death and carrying their destructive weapons of poison had temporarily halted. My platelets were up. My appetite was slowly coming back. I was no longer skin and bone, no longer Dachau outbound. Colour was slowly returning to my lips and skin. The hair was coming back, gradually and in short, ugly patches.

Whoever had said that money couldn't buy happiness was lying. The new millionaire Rose bought a new plush leather couch, $200 blankets and heaters, and a huge plasma screen. I bought comedies upon comedies, I bought paints and colouring pencils and canvases. I bought fancy clothes and boots and jewellery from Guess? Gucci, Prada. I went home every day with bags of things and filled my life and all its holes.

And then, there was Dimitri, the NYPD officer investigating Lissa's disappearance. He was with me, almost every night. He had been there from the very beginning, picking me up and driving me to the hospital in the dead of the night when no one else would. Me, with my purple bruised legs and sickly stomach. He had seen me in the worst of conditions, the worst of states- without hair, barely skin and bones, balding, and vomiting on his shoes.

He had seen me in a hospital bed, barely there and disappearing; feverish and unable to remember his phone number. He had seen me with barely any life left in my eyes, in my face. And yet, he always came back. With food, with suggestions, with company, with comfort and silence. I liked him best on my worst days. He didn't say anything, and I appreciated that. That, and he didn't want a cent from me, unlike my family. There were no expectations, no anger. He said yes to everything and anything I wanted. He did everything in that easy going Dimitri way. Go out to eat? Sure. Go to the movies? Let's go. Come over and hang out on the coach? On my way.

We had slipped into an easy, comfortable relationship. We sat most of our nights sitting on my plush coach watching comedy after comedy. I had put on Groundhog Day for the 25th time. I had no idea why I loved it so much. I could practically mouth the words.

Some days we went out and ate. Stuffed cabbage, pierogi, jelly, borshct, brownies at Odessa. Greek salad, bread pudding and cheesecake at the little café around the corner. We ordered thick shakes, pizza and Pad Thai. Or we went to the theatre. I spent most of those nights with my eyes behind my hands, especially those nights when Dimitri chose movies like the Shining.

One time, we went to a Bruce Springsteen concert. The music was loud and blaring, shaking my addled veins, the words reverberating in my heart. That hadn't been the only reason I had loved it so much. Dimitri had held me close that whole night, protecting me from the shoving, gyrating crowd. His warm hands had held me close, his breath in my hair, his voice at my ear.

Some nights, he came to watch me paint. This much spare time meant that I had painted a whole roomful of canvases. The subjects were mostly random. Watercolour cats, oil paintings of Time Square and the Flat Iron building, drawings and sketches of patches of trees and parks, paintings of people I imagined or had briefly seen.

"These are actually really good," Dimitri said, one afternoon.

I turned away from my vision of Battery Park. The turpentine was taking forever to dry.

"What?"

His smiling eyes met mine, looking down at my rendering of Times Square. "You should sell them."

I shrugged. "They're alright, I suppose. I can't imagine people ever buying them."

"Well, at least it'll clear up some room in your apartment."

I surveyed the room. Clutter, clutter, clutter. Canvases lay across every available place, some drying, and some too precious to even keep on the floor. Paints and colour pencils were strewn across the room, some lying half open on benches, others shoved in buckets or drawers.

I frowned.

Two afternoons later, Dimitri came over, shaking his head.

"What happened to you?"

I was on the coach with my legs up on the wall, my head slinging off the edge of the coach. He came and sat next to me and the coach sunk slightly under his weight.

"I went to Greenwich Village to find you, but you weren't there anymore. That's not much staying power. It's like fishing. It'll take some time for a bite. It's all in the water."

I sat up and turned to him. "Well the water must have been really good today because I sold everything."

It was true. I sold every last one. Even the ones that were plain and boring, and completely random. An auction like situation even arose when two customers tussled over a painting of a cat.

Dimitri's reaction brought a smile to my lips. His jaw slackened. "All of them? How much did you get?"

"Enough to buy you lunch. Come on."

He raised an eyebrow. I whipped out a wad of cash and smiled, triumphant. "$1000."

And like that, my paintings continued to sell. No matter how much I charged, or how mundane the subject matter was, people bought my paintings. My cancer had awoken something within me. I didn't just see the world. I understood it. I saw beyond its superficial façade and its flaws. I saw truth. I saw beauty. I saw the flawed and the flawless. I saw the pained and the painless. My senses were open to everything.

I couldn't have predicted what happened next. Happiness and blinding colour began to grow and ooze and leak into my life, and into my paintings. My paintings told my whole story. And much more. My hands were empty a couple of months ago. Now they were full. I drew popcorn hands. I drew a woman with flowers, her eyes full of love.

I drew pictures of a couple in love. They stood in an embrace in some photos. In others, they kissed. Sometimes they simply looked at each other. In one, they stood in front of a police car flashing with sirens, kissing feverishly.

I had a particular favourite, one I refused to sell no matter how good anyone thought it was. The couple was at Greenwich Village. The woman sat at a table with a folding chair and a handful of paintings. Her dark brown hair was short and spiky, her brown eyes, large and excited. The man was leaning over the table, his smiling face near hers. His hair was secured demurely at the nape of his neck. He was tall and had brown soft eyes. Their lips almost touched. She looked up at him, her face raised to the heavens, smiling, aching with young love.

So, Dimitri loved Rose. Despite everything. What a guy.

And Groundhog Day is actually one of MY favourite movies. I'm still working out why I love it so much. And of course, Bruce Springsteen...!

I can't write this chapter and not bring this up:

I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my aunt, a beautiful woman who was taken away from us, too soon. She died of breast cancer years ago, and it broke all our hearts. I love you. We think of you everyday. I could never understand what you went through. All I know was that you were brave. You were strong. It hurt so much, but you fought. I hope you're living somewhere beautiful, where there are no pain and tears. My pen name, Lysa, is for you.

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