As he waited on the sterile bed in the white room, he lifted his shaking pencil with the determination to draw everything.  There was not a single memory he would allow himself to forget.  With the rhythm of the beeping machine next to him, he gently touched the lead down to the crisp paper in front of him.
The hands that had once crafted some of the most beautiful images refused to remember their past finesse, leaving him with a shaking reflection of a clouded memory.  Rather than flounder for the dreams of his past, he grasped his present in the form of a remote control.  He couldn’t help but feel powerless as the bed stole the simple task of sitting up from him.  Trying to ignore his defenestration, he formed a veering line.
A man could not forget his entire life.  The doctors say the chances are too minimal to be concerned about, but he didn’t trust doctors after what they did to his sister.  He tried to stop thinking about them; he tried to stop thinking about her.  It was his mind that may end up damaged which meant he needed to push through the barriers he had placed throughout his mind, the dams keeping his mind sane.
Looking down at his first attempt, he felt as though he had dunked his head in warm saltwater.  His talent washed away as easily as any sandcastle his grandson could have made; he hoped the same would not happen to his mind.
“Now stop frettin’. You’re in the best of hands here but whatever happens is what He wants for you,” the nurse had told him in a voice of honey, though this was an act for the doctor who had come with her that day.  Usually she was much less of a lady, but even when she tried to be kind she managed to remind him of a troll.
Looking down for the first time in weeks, he stared at a blank page.  He eased the pencil onto the paper with a lift of his hand, sweeping it in the arcs of a willow.  The tree came to life under his pencil, and the warm Oklahoman breeze brushed through his limbs making him yearn for a day from long ago.  His mother stood half hidden under the branches in her usual position.  She was never like the other mothers.  She never spent time to get to know him, she never seemed to like him, and she certainly never loved him.  He drew his youngest sister, back to the woman and shoulders hunched.  Her hair covered her face, hiding her from the nightmare that lived behind her.
Blue water surrounded the ship that had rescued him from the woman; he no longer had to hide in fear and would never regret the day he ran away to join the Navy.  He had been welcomed into a family, something he had never had before.  The meals were better and much less sparse than they once had been and he slowly grew out of the bag of bones he had been before.  But the safety of his new life didn’t last long before he was thrown out into the real world again to take care of himself.
He drew his bible clutched to his heart.  God had saved him from the woman and he would save him again.  But in his other hand he held the hand of a new woman who had been sent him to pick him up off the cement of the crowded sidewalks.  The gentle curve of her friendly smile seemed to melt his heart through the years.  She had been there for him for so long now he couldn’t seem to recall the beginning.  His angel had held his hand through the second half of his life and had never left his side.  She gifted him with four beautiful children to love and fill the next pages with.  They ran and smiled and laughed.  They were worth every minute of his time.  He spent all of the precious hours he had left on them.  Making sure he’d always have memories to carry with him.
His book would never win a Nobel Prize or be put into print for anyone else to see, but he was still proud of the short collection that was bound together loosely by two paperclips in front of him.  It may not be impressive to any other person, but to him it marked the day he sat his bed up and decided he wouldn’t spend another day drooling into his pillow while staring at the ceiling. 

His eyes peeled open through the crust that had formed to see a white roof above him held up by white walls.  Looking around he didn’t recognize anything.  The room echoed with a hallow sound while he sat alone. He nervously jostled around and shouted for help. 
The nurse darted into the room nearly immediately.  She was such a kind woman that he felt at ease while she asked him a series of questions that didn’t make sense. He felt like an infant being asked about physics.  She clearly spoke English, but it didn’t hold any meaning to him.
With a sort of empathy in her eyes, she sat several papers in front of him. Looking down he was met with more confusion; the pages were filled with indecipherable scribbles.  He looked back up into her sad eyes.
He tried thinking back to before the surgery, but he was met with a black void and was worried that pushing into it would trap him in a pit too deep to climb out of.  The mirror across from him showed him a stranger though he was familiar.  His head was wrapped thickly in with gauze, and his bones were jutting forward from lack of substance; he looked too pale to be healthy.  He was a monster.  Through the haze of thoughts he heard the nurse talking. She said she was waiting for his sister to come as she was the only family he had since his mother died three years prior.  The words didn’t seem right, but he nodded slowly as he was lost in memories of his imagination.