It sounds strange to say it, but Reeve is, in a certain sense, a fortunate man, and he knows it. Bedford, in Westchester County, New York, is a cartoonishly idyllic slice of rural America - dappled lanes, Colonial-era houses, gleaming white church spires and grass so vividly green it might have been treated with extra chlorophyll. And he has money - enough to live in a vast, airy, modernist home, secluded on a hill shrouded by woodland; enough to have had it adapted to include, among other things, a lift; and enough to pay for a small army of aides, including his longtime nurse, Dolly Arro, who glides into the room at intervals to feed him water through a straw.