When My Kindness Crushed Them

Summary

The kid on the eighth floor had an obsession with throwing things off the balcony.

Every single night, right around eleven o’clock, a glass bottle would plummet through the dark and shatter violently against the metal awning outside my first-floor patio.

The impact sounded like a gunshot echoing through the quiet courtyard. Over the past two weeks, my mother—who lived with severe congestive heart failure—had been rushed to the emergency room three times, clutching her chest, gasping for air that wouldn't come.