extensive reading programme

-your reaction when the person you love is ill and the relationship after that



It was a silent night. After a playing badminton game lasted for three hours with my best friend, I was almost out of energy. I was standing next to the window and enjoying my eastern noodle vigorously. The soft breeze caressed my face with love. The aroma totally dissolved my whole body. The food was simple but delicious.

Suddenly, the sound of Institution Anthem, which is the ring tone of my hand phone, tore the silence. My nerve tightened at once. I took out my hand phone and checked the new short message in the inbox.

“I got a headache today. And I caught a cold because of walking in rain…” written in the short message by my best friend.”

I kept holding my hand phone for approximately three minutes. The pictures of playing badminton today appeared in my mind. He seemed to be tired and unhappy. I could tell he had been trying his best to play the game with me.

I was angry with myself; I even had not asked him why he was such unhappy at that time. I wanted to kill myself. During the game, I was like a little child, keeping smashing and smashing. I was trying to beat him without knowing he was sick. How irresponsible was I! I stepped my foot on the floor and walked about times after times. I hit my thigh with my tightened fist.

Throwing my hand phone on my bed, I tried to rummage the methods of curing cold. I poured out all the medicines that were in my first-aid box on my bed violently, checking bag by bag. “Hydrogen peroxide”? I threw it away. “Curing bone freckle”? I threw it away… I could not help throwing all the irrelevant things away. I desired to get a machine to help me sapping the correct medicine out.

I collapsed on my bed, with my sweat flipping along my cheek. fiddling my hand phone in my hand, I thought over and over again. I was extremely angry with him as well as worried about him. In the next short message, I wrote the following words:

“You are so careless! I will send the medicine up to your room tomorrow. Remember: do not eat fried food, as well as chocolate. They would make you worse. Take care of yourself…”

On the following day, I went up to his room and knocked the door gently. Nobody answered and nobody came out of the room. Pushing open the door, my best friend was sleeping. With small movement, I stepped in and put a bag of medicine on his desk with a piece of paper pasted on it:

“Remember to take medicine on time. Expect you to be better soon. The yellow medicine should be taken three times a day……”

I felt surge of happiness when he told me he had felt much better than before, two days later. Since then, I began to know: “best friends” does not only mean people who play with you or people who are “sticky” with you all the time. More importantly, “best friends” means people who you could care each other, and people who you pay more of your love towards. They are the one who you value.