Nell stopped for a moment before breaking him out of his ractive. Some 
weeks he looked better than others; this week he did not look good. His body 
was bloated, his face round and heavy, his fingers swollen to puffy cylinders; 
they had been giving him heavy steroid treatments. But she would have known 
he'd had a bad week anyway, because usually Harv didn't go in for immersive 
ractives. He liked the kind you held in your lap on a sheet of smart paper. 
Nell tried to send Harv a letter every day, simply written in mediaglyphics, 
and for a while he had tried to respond in kind. Last year he had even given up 
on this, though she wrote him faithfully anyway.