Mexico enters the novel as a destination Yolandi considers while trying to answer Elfrieda’s request for help dying. Her online research turns the country into a possible route to a drug that she believes would be difficult to obtain and bring across the border. Yet the more concrete the plan becomes, the more sharply it exposes the legal and moral risks of helping her sister: Mexico is never reached, and the idea remains entangled with Yolandi’s uncertainty about what she can do without encouraging Elfrieda’s death.

A Destination Found Online

Sitting on a balcony with her laptop, Yolandi reads that pentobarbital, also called Nembutal, is used to put animals to sleep and can be bought in Mexico. The accounts she finds direct would-be purchasers away from border towns such as Tijuana, where police are said to be suspicious of people seeking the drug, and toward remote places in the country’s interior. The information makes Mexico seem accessible through an ordinary transaction at a pet shop, even as the warnings about dangerous streets make that apparent simplicity uneasy.

The obstacle, as Yolandi understands it from her reading, is not only obtaining the drug but bringing it back across the border. She therefore considers taking Elfrieda to Mexico instead of carrying the drug to her. That shift makes the country part of a plan involving travel, secrecy, and Elfrieda’s participation, not simply a source for a medication. Yolandi also worries that even helping open a bottle or suggesting the plan could make her legally responsible for her sister’s death.

The Mexican Option and Its Limits

Yolandi weighs the Mexican possibility against taking Elfrieda to Zurich, where assisted death is legal under conditions she has read about. The Mexico plan would involve finding Nembutal in a remote town and avoiding any action that could be interpreted as encouraging Elfrieda; the Swiss plan would depend on whether doctors judged Elfrieda’s suffering sufficient. Yolandi recognizes that the boundaries of encouragement are unclear, and that neither route can be reduced to a simple practical solution.

Both possibilities also depend on Nic and Lottie agreeing to the plan. Yolandi fears that telling Elfrieda about access to Nembutal could extinguish any small wish to live, while withholding the possibility might leave her sister to travel alone after leaving hospital. Mexico thus concentrates the conflict between Yolandi’s desire to accompany and protect Elfrieda and her fear of becoming an agent in her death.

A Plan Not Taken

Mexico remains hypothetical. The evidence shows Yolandi researching and weighing the option, not traveling there or obtaining Nembutal. Her later search for a clinic in Zurich confirms that she continues to investigate assisted death, while Lottie expresses doubt that such a clinic is meant for someone who is not already dying. The contrast does not resolve the sisters’ crisis; it underscores how each proposed destination offers a different version of the same unanswered question about law, responsibility, and care.

As a location in the novel, Mexico is therefore defined less by its landscape than by the limits of what Yolandi believes she can do there. It appears through online instructions and imagined logistics, then recedes before becoming a setting for action. Its narrative importance lies in the pressure the possibility places on Yolandi: searching for a route to fulfill Elfrieda’s request also forces her to confront the difference between accompanying her sister and helping bring about her death.