Mum was in hospital the night I met Vince. She’d had another stroke. The first one they’d called mild: she couldn’t speak for weeks. This one was worse. On the phone, Dad said she couldn’t recognise him. I’ll be there as fast as I can.

          I was asleep on the train when I became aware of the man behind me. He was wheezing loudly as though winded. I wondered if he was having an asthma attack, so I went to him. He clutched a leather laptop bag to his chest, brown and worn to the bone.

          ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

          ‘Haven’t had one of these since I was a kid,’ he said, drawing in breath.

          ‘Do you have a puffer?’

          He shook his head.

          There was an old couple near the front of the carriage and a man asleep against a window. I called out to see if anyone had an inhaler. ‘Nah, sorry love,’ was the reply.

          ‘I should call an ambulance,’ I said, rummaging through my handbag for my phone. ‘Do you know what station we’re coming to?’

          It was night. Through my reflection in the window I could see the distant lights of a houseboat or a bush property across the river. I flipped open my phone and started to dial the emergency services. He clasped his bag more firmly.

          ‘No need,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right as rain in a minute.’

          He seemed disorientated. His gaze flittered from me to the seat in front then onto the carriage floor.

          ‘Maybe I can sit next to you,’ I said.

          He didn’t answer.

          ‘What do you think?’ I persisted.

          ‘Sure,’ he gasped.

          He made room for me to get to the window seat, leaning one arm on the armrest while still clutching that laptop bag to his chest.

          ‘Don’t you ever let go of that?’

          ‘It’s my work.’

          ‘It must be important,’ I joked as I edged past him.

          He tried to laugh as he sat. I asked him his name. ‘Vince’ blew from his mouth like a punch. I told him it was probably best he didn’t speak. But he seemed unwilling to stop, undeterred by whatever discomfort he was feeling. In a rasping voice, he told me about how when he started having asthma attacks as a child his parents cancelled his tennis lessons. They refused to let him continue playing the oboe. They even threatened to withdraw him from art class for fear that fumes from paint and linseed oil created the wrong atmosphere for an asthmatic.

          ‘How do you tell a kid to stop being a kid?’ he said with a shallow breath. ‘I did art for my HSC. Pissed Mum off...’