The clear blue sky was as vast as the ocean, he couldn't remember a day more beautiful than this in his early memories, and it tugged at his heart with so much melancholy as he sat in that quiet room, quiet save the sound of the steady pump of the respirator and the beeping of the monitor.
Can she hear me? He wondered, studying that pale, sunken face on the bed beside him, a face that had once been so bright and warm and full of love.
The slow rise and fall of her chest under the blankets was so subtle he sometimes wondered if the beeping of the heart monitor was a lie and she was already gone, gone into that vast beautiful sky, blue as her loving eyes, vast as her heart.
"I finally made a boy friend," a young Sanji had spoken quietly so as not to disturb the stillness of the room.
"Father said I'm not allowed to play with girls, it was so lonely," he had left out the part about all the boys who had picked on him, bullied him. "But I finally made a boy friend."
She didn't move. The nurses said she could hear him, but he wondered if they only said this to give him peace. He was so achingly alone in this. His brothers were bitterly indifferent, abusive, his sister offered little by way of support. Alone in this quiet room with his dying mother, how he longed for his voice to reach her, penetrate her unconscious mind, carry her back to the land of the living, back to him. How cruel was the sky on that day, so clear and blue when inside this room it was overcast, inside his heart it was pouring rain.
"He played his violin for me afterschool. You would like him, he plays really well."
The steady pump of the respirator sighed rhythmically in response.
"Maybe if he came and played for you, maybe you could hear it?"
His voice cracked.
"They say I can't cook for you anymore… I hope what they're feeding you is good."
The young boy's eyes were fixed on that spot in the blankets that rose and fell so slightly it was almost unnoticeable. Glancing occasionally at his mother's face, tubes sticking out frighteningly, he wondered how uncomfortable she'd be if she woke up like this.
"My friend, I wish you could meet him. He's so nice. He makes me very happy when I'm with him."
He felt childish, talking to the silence of the room, when in fact he was nearly a teenager. Coming to her room like this, every day, to find her condition slowly deteriorating, it made him feel like he was wasting away too. How he longed for this to be over, for his loving mother to recover and for life to go back to how it was meant to be, with her kind, doting arms, her soft, gentle voice. If only she would wake up, all the horrible things would be better. Father wouldn't be so mean, his brother's wouldn't be so cruel. If only they had that gentleness, that miraculous goodness in their life, that healing quality of a mother's presence, everything would be different. Everything would be better.
A desperate force tugged at his heart as if magnetized to something outside of his body. In this calm, quiet room, the longing inside the still boy's body was hysterically urgent.
He reached out with delicate young hands to take the frail fingers that lie on the mattress, and wrapped his warm hands around them, squeezing gently and praying for something in return. Some brief acknowledgment of his presence. Some indication that his being there had brought her comfort.
He sat there for hours, watching as that beautiful blue sky heated into a pink and purple glow.
A knock came at the door and Sanji stirred to see a nurse standing in the doorway.
"It's time to go, little Vinsmoke," she spoke gently.
Part of him hated to leave, and a guilty part of him was relieved. He stepped towards the nurse and through the doorway, looking back one final time. His mother's head was tilted towards him, and her eyes, her eyes had opened and were staring at him a piercing blue. Sanji froze in place, heart stopping in his chest, those bright, pleading eyes so powerfully grounding him in the doorway. He wanted to run to her, run to her desperately, and a fearful, cowardly part of him was so frightened by the intensity of those eyes that he wanted to run away. But before he could move the door had been closed behind him, and he stood there feeling empty, speechless, like a part of his own soul had been left behind that closed door, captured in the vastness of those blue eyes, and forever lost.
She didn't make it through the night.