A Woman on the Fourteenth Floor

A woman from the 14th floor of my apartment block took her own life a few weeks ago by jumping from her balcony early on a Saturday morning. I didn't know her. She was just another person who lived at the same apartment complex. I live on the third floor, far below her unit. I don't think we ever met, but we might have shared the lobby or an elevator at some point.

Everything seemed normal when I woke up that morning. I didn't know that the police and ambulance were already outside. Later, a neighbor told us that he had been smoking on his balcony when he heard a loud crash. He thought it was a car crash at first. He didn't know what had happened until he looked down. She jumped just before dawn and landed in her parking space. The guy alerted the security immediately, who later called the police. The apartment residents started to gather at their windows and look down in silence. A few people came into the lobby to find out more but were told to disperse. My husband went out to get breakfast around 7 AM, and the body was still on the ground. The area was cordoned off with police tape. I only learned about it when my husband returned 40 minutes later because I was sleeping late.

My husband spoke with the security guard, as he always does when something unusual occurs. The guard told him she was in her late forties, divorced, and living alone. She had left a note, labeled her belongings, moved her car to another spot, cleaned her apartment, and paid her bills. She had meticulously planned every detail. No one was left wondering about her intentions.

The cleaners came to clean up the area after the police and medical team took the body away, but her parking space remained cordoned off for a while. There was a noticeable faint bloody stain on the ground when you looked down. Life in the building was mostly back to normal by Monday. People in the neighborhood went about their business as usual, kids ran through the corridors, and doors opened and closed as they always do.

I found myself thinking about her more than I expected. I wondered if I had ever seen her in the lobby or the car park or heard her door close above mine, though that seemed unlikely. She lived fourteen floors up, always out of reach, a life carried overhead, distant yet close enough for her absence to register. In buildings like this, you share an address with dozens of strangers, known not by name but by unit numbers on mailboxes or passing shadows in stairwells.

I didn’t feel grief, exactly. There was no surge of sadness, no urge to gather people or speak about it aloud. Instead, I felt a pause and lingering awareness of the space she left behind. Life continued as usual, but for a while I noticed how quiet and gloomy the building was.

I pictured her last days in fragments: the careful way she arranged her affairs, her decision to land where no one would witness it by chance. There was a precision to the ending, free of drama and leaving little for others to clean up beyond what could not be helped. I admit that thinking about the situation makes it feel sad and creepy at the same time.

Now her parking bay is just another space again. The tape is gone, the surface has been cleaned, and things are back to normal. I wonder if her family will rent or sell her unit. Sometimes at night, when the building is quiet and I hear the faint sound of furniture moving above me, I think of her, someone I never knew, living her life high above mine until one morning she was gone.

There is no lesson to learn; it's just the way it is. Her life ran parallel to mine, a story I never read. There is now a tiny gap where she used to be, and the rest of us keep living under the same roof and going about our lives.

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