When the Sky Calls Your Name

Marta first heard the thunder the morning she finally tried to put his jacket away.

The sky over Naples was clear. Sunlight bounced off laundry strung between buildings on Via Speranza. Scooters passed below, leaving the usual mix of petrol and coffee in the air. From the balcony she could see a thin line of the gulf.

Inside the bedroom, the air was still.

She stood in front of the wardrobe with Matteo’s navy windbreaker in her hands. His name was stitched inside the collar in uneven thread, her first attempt at sewing letters when he began losing jackets at school. The fabric still held a faint trace of his shampoo.

A cardboard box sat open on the bed. Inside were a dinosaur T shirt, a pair of trainers, a notebook filled with dragon sketches. The jacket was supposed to go next.

“One thing at a time,” she whispered.

Her hand did not move. Her throat tightened. Her vision blurred for a moment.

Somewhere beyond the balcony, thunder rolled.

It was faint at first. With a cloudy sky she might not have noticed. But the sky was bright, and the sound seemed too full, too slow to come from any vehicle or nearby construction.

Marta held her breath.

The rumble faded, then came again, longer this time. It felt as if it reached into the apartment.

The jacket slipped from her hands, landing half on its hanger, half off.

She waited for a third roll. None came. Outside, someone called to a neighbor, their voice cheerful and ordinary.

“Just thunder,” Marta said. “Even when the sky looks calm.”

She closed the wardrobe, leaving the jacket where it fell. Later, coffee did nothing to steady her. The thunder stayed in her mind, out of place and hard to dismiss.

The storms had begun the week after Matteo died.

The doctors had called it a rare complication. They used medical terms that explained nothing about how a cough turned into a ventilator in three days.

“It is not anything you did,” they said, which became a sentence that echoed in dark hours.

The weather during that week had been relentlessly sunny. Children ran on the lungomare, ice cream dripped on sidewalks, fishermen joked as they worked. The morning after the machines stopped, the weather finally changed. Clouds gathered quickly. Rain struck the shutters. Thunder rolled for hours.

Marta had sat at the kitchen table listening, grateful for the noise.

The thunder that day was wild and uneven. She did not hear anything in it except force.

The first time she thought she heard her name, she was rinsing Matteo’s mug. Another storm had arrived. Rain tapped lightly at the window. Thunder rolled steadily.

Then something shifted in the sound.

It rose and softened again, and for a moment it sounded like the beginning of a word she knew. The way Matteo said her name when he was tired or wanted one more story.

Ma.

The mug slipped in the sink.

“No,” she whispered. “Not this.”

Thunder rolled again, quieter.

She told herself grief made her hear patterns that were not there. A mind used to holding a child’s routines suddenly had space it did not know what to do with.

Still, she slept with the light on.

Storms came often in the months that followed. Heat built each morning until the afternoons felt heavy. A gray band of clouds would appear at the horizon, marking the start of another storm.

Most days the thunder sounded normal. But sometimes she heard something else. A faint rise in tone that resembled a child’s laugh. A soft drop in sound at the exact moment she felt her thoughts spiraling. A shape in the noise that made her pause.

She spoke to no one about it. When her sister called from Turin and urged her to stay with them for a while, she said she was fine. When a colleague asked if she disliked storms, she simply said that Naples made them stronger.

“You should not be alone so much,” Anna said.

“I’m not,” Marta replied.

Just then, Lorenzo from 3B laughed loudly through the wall, as if to answer her.

“He reminds you of Matteo,” Anna said gently.

“A little.”

“It will settle with time,” Anna said.

Thunder rolled across the city. Marta felt it move inside her chest.

“Maybe,” she said.

On a Thursday in late May, the storm arrived earlier than expected.

The morning heat was sharp, making the narrow alleyways feel tight. Marta passed Francesca and Lorenzo on the stairs.

“Too hot for May,” Marta said. “A storm is coming.”

Lorenzo sneezed. His cheeks were warm and flushed.

“Raffreddore,” Francesca said. “Everyone in his class has it.”

“If you need anything during the storm, knock,” Marta said. “My power stays on better than most.”

“You’re a blessing,” Francesca said. “You should read Lorenzo a dragon story someday.”

Marta nodded, though something inside her tightened.

As she reached her door, thunder murmured above a clear sky.

By three o’clock the sky had changed.

Light outside the library windows had turned flat. People moved quickly on Via Toledo. Marta shelved books without much focus. Her colleague frowned at the shifting sky.

“You should go home,” Signora Bianchi said. “This one looks serious.”

“It will pass,” Marta said out of habit.

Lightning lit up the street. Thunder followed instantly, shaking the shelves.

For a moment, the sound resembled a clear instruction.

Go.

Marta set her book down. “Maybe you’re right.”

She left the library and stepped into heavy rain.

Within seconds she was drenched. The sloped street flowed like a shallow river. Thunder cracked repeatedly, loud enough to make her flinch.

Another sound rose inside the thunder. A familiar shape.

Mamma.

She walked faster.

By the time she reached her building, she was shivering and breathless. Inside the stairwell, she listened. A cough sounded through the wall. It came again. High, strained, too frequent.

She knocked on Francesca’s door.

Francesca opened it with panic in her eyes. “I didn’t want to bother you. The ambulance told me to wait. My husband is stuck in traffic. Look at him.”

Lorenzo lay on the sofa, his curls damp with sweat. His lips looked pale. His chest rose and fell too fast, the skin at his throat pulling in with each breath.

“How long?” Marta asked.

“Since after lunch. He shook with fever earlier. I gave him medicine. But now he breathes like this. He said the dragons outside were angry.”

Thunder rumbled.

Marta touched his forehead. Burning. She watched the rise and fall of his ribs.

Too fast.

“We’re not waiting,” she said.

“I told them,” Francesca said, close to tears, “but they said to monitor him.”

“Call back,” Marta said. “Tell them his breathing is pulling in at the throat. Tell them it’s too fast to count. Say you’re a nurse. Don’t ask. Tell them.”

Her tone left no room for doubt.

She wiped Lorenzo’s forehead with a cool cloth. His fingers curled around hers weakly.

“You owe me a dragon story,” she whispered.

Sirens finally cut through the storm.

Paramedics arrived quickly. They took one look at Lorenzo and moved with purpose. Fever. Low oxygen. Chest retractions.

“We’ve seen this several times already today,” the older paramedic said. “You did the right thing calling.”

They lifted Lorenzo onto the stretcher. He held Marta’s hand until they placed the mask over his face.

“Go with them,” Marta told Francesca. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Thunder rumbled as they carried him away.

The hospital was bright and busy. Doctors moved quickly but calmly. Nurses checked vitals, adjusted oxygen masks, reassured families.

Lorenzo was taken to an examination room. Doctors ordered tests.

“It’s pneumonia on top of influenza,” one explained. “He should respond well to treatment. You brought him in at the right time.”

Francesca nodded, her hand on Lorenzo’s foot.

“You stay with him,” Marta said. “I’ll give you space.”

She walked to a small waiting room near the end of the corridor.

Outside, the storm was easing. Rain had softened to a drizzle. The parking lot glistened. Over the gulf, however, a tall, dark cloud remained still, as if undecided about leaving.

Thunder rolled faintly.

Marta placed her hand on the window.

“If that was you,” she said quietly, “thank you.”

Her breath formed a small patch of fog on the glass. For a moment the room was silent.

Then thunder rolled again, softer but more focused, as if shaped into a message.

It is not over.

She felt the meaning settle inside her.

Two nurses walked by.

“Another child from that area,” one said. “High fever and breathing trouble.”

“That’s the third today,” the other replied.

Their voices faded.

A cough echoed from another room. High pitched. Not Lorenzo’s.

Marta looked back at the window.

The dark cloud over the gulf had begun moving slowly inland.

She remembered Matteo explaining storms to her when he was eight. How clouds traveled. How weather changed shape. How you could learn things by watching.

A small movement on the glass caught her eye.

A faint handprint appeared in the condensation at child height. Five fingers. Distinct.

Marta froze.

She placed her hand over it. Her skin warmed the glass. After a moment, the print faded.

She turned. The waiting room was empty.

A soft rumble moved through the walls. The lights flickered once.

Marta stepped into the corridor. She felt tired, alert, and strangely steady.

Something is coming, the thunder seemed to say.

A nurse passed. “The boy from Room Four is resting. Another child just arrived. Same symptoms. It may be a long night.”

When the nurse left, Marta stood alone. Behind each door were children breathing fast or steady, frightened parents whispering, nurses checking monitors.

She thought of Matteo’s jacket still hanging crooked. Lorenzo’s flushed cheeks. The handprint that had appeared for only a moment.

She also felt something new. A sense of purpose. As if her son had reached her in the only way he could.

She began walking toward the pediatric rooms.

If all she could offer was attention, guidance, and the words that made doctors move faster, she would give them.

A final roll of thunder moved over Naples. It passed through the hospital softly, like a reminder.

Marta did not look back at the window.

She kept walking toward the children who needed help.