John

He opened his mouth, but nothing came. Suddenly he realized he was crying. The thought of two grown people sitting on a bench next to each other, crying for no apparent reason, struck him as so odd that he let out a laugh. This seemed to break the tension in his body, and he folded back onto himself like a book. He almost melted off the bench. He couldn't stop laughing. More so, he was starting to sound a bit insane.
He didn't stop until a warm hand touched his face. Her hands were never cold.
"John," she croaked, the disbelief in her eyes plain to see. She kept looking at every part of his face, as if to check if it was really him. Then she got up, shaking her head.
"I-I'm so sorry. I'm just very confused today, and –"
"Don't go, Katherine," he said, grabbing her hand.
She sucked in her breath sharply, and said: "I'd forgotten the sound of your voice."
He smiled at her. She flushed red, and went pale immediately after. Then her eyes rolled back, and her hand slipped out of his. Like an idiot, he watched her fall to the ground.
"Oh," was all he could manage.

Katherine

I woke up in a hospital. The sight of the completely new environment startled me so, that I shot up involuntarily. Pain roared through me like a flame, and it burned my left side. I stifled a scream.
"Are you awake, little lady?" a gentle voice came. I looked up.
"William," was all I managed before I burst out in tears.
He patted my head. That was William's response to pretty much everything. He said: "You know, you're the only one that calls me that." I did know, and I could really use a hug. When I tried lifting my arms, a real scream came.
"Shh, shh," William hushed me, "don't try to move just yet. They didn't want to give you pain drugs, because they needed to know what bits of you are hurting." He frowned at this.
"Oh," I said.
"Why are my bits hurting?" I added.
"We don't know yet," he sighed.
The way he said it told me everything I needed to know. She did it. And she did it so thoroughly that I had lost conscience. Or did I lose conscience first? I couldn't quite remember.
"I'll go get the doctor," William added.
Like any good doctor, it took her well over an hour to come and see me. During that time, I prodded and poked at William until he told me everything. He'd found me in the kitchen, surrounded by what looked like broken shards of a glass pitcher. I had been stone cold.
"That pitcher was my fault," I said bitterly.
"Shush, nothing about this is your fault," William spoke sternly.
I'd been bleeding from my head. When he said this, I carefully lifted my right hand to feel it. It was bandaged.
He had ran back to his house next door to ring an ambulance, since we didn't have a landline anymore. When the ambulance had finally come – "It really felt like forever." – the crew wouldn't let him on at first. But he had said he'd rather fight them than let them drive off without him, so in the end they'd just shrugged and let him hold her hand on the way to the hospital. Only to dump him in the waiting room as soon as they'd arrived.
Where he had been for a full five minutes until he charmed his way into my room. This made me smile. But then I frowned, thinking of something unpleasant.
"What did my mom say?" I didn't want to ask this question, I didn't want to care, but I wasn't fooling anyone on this point so I might as well ask.
William shrugged, saying: "I didn't see her. Admittedly, I didn't go looking for her either, so maybe she was just passed out upstairs."
This hurt me more than I would admit out loud. If I had been stone cold, like William said, I must have been lying there for hours. Hours in which my mom did nothing to help me, possibly even hurt me further.
"Don't be such a softie, she left you there to die," a voice said. I didn't like this voice, it said many unpleasant things. Like: "If you'd just leave this house, I might feel sorry for you. But you're still here, aren't you? You're so weak."
Because a real voice telling me about my faults wasn't enough. I had to torture myself some more. "Because you like torture. If you could, you'd take a bath in it," the voice said, smirking.
"What are you thinking about, silly girl? Don't you worry. Everything will be alright," William smiled. He took my hand.