Yolandi considers taking Elfrieda to Switzerland for assisted suicide

Yolandi considers taking Elfrieda Von Riesen to Switzerland for assisted suicide as she tries to reconcile her sister’s request with her own impulse to protect her. The possibility develops from an initial refusal into practical research and a tentative plan, but it never becomes a settled decision in the events described. Its central tension is intimate and unresolved: Yolandi does not want Elfrieda to die, yet fears that refusing her may leave her alone with her suffering and her choices.

The first refusal and the sisters’ conflict

Yolandi’s resistance has a history. When Elfrieda had tried to die by refusing food, Lottie called Yolandi from Toronto to ask her to come. Yolandi went to Elfrieda’s room and called an ambulance despite Elfrieda’s pleas and Lottie’s silence. In the emergency room, the sisters acknowledged the conflict between Elfrieda’s wish to die and Yolandi’s wish that she live. They could oppose each other and love each other at once. That earlier rescue does not settle the later question; it makes clear why any decision about Switzerland carries the weight of their relationship, rather than being an abstract argument about law.

When Elfrieda asks Yolandi to take her to Switzerland, Yolandi initially refuses. Elfrieda challenges that refusal by comparing it with Yolandi’s own reasons for continuing to live. Yolandi accepts that a hoped-for future may be unlikely but says she remains because it might still happen. Elfrieda argues that, if Yolandi’s hope is enough to justify staying, then certainty about her own eventual death should also matter. Their exchange exposes a difference in how they understand uncertainty: Yolandi treats the possibility of change as a reason to wait, while Elfrieda sees no hidden future capable of outweighing her wish to leave. The disagreement is not presented as a simple contest between hope and despair; each sister uses the other’s reasoning to question what the right to choose should mean.

Researching a possible route

Yolandi’s position shifts when she investigates the options. She searches for information about obtaining Nembutal in Spain, then reads about assisted death in Switzerland. Her online research leads her to understand that Swiss law may permit assistance for a person with mental illness, that citizenship is not required, and that assistance must not be motivated by selfish interests. She recognizes this as an explanation for Elfrieda’s request, but legal possibility does not resolve whether Yolandi should participate or whether an application would succeed.

She weighs a route involving Mexico and Nembutal against travel to Zurich and a clinic assessment. In her understanding, the Swiss route could fail if physicians judged Elfrieda’s suffering insufficient. She also recognizes that family agreement would matter to the plan she is imagining: she would need Nic and Lottie to agree. The practical research therefore multiplies, rather than removes, the uncertainties. Yolandi is also unsure whether telling Elfrieda that she is considering these options could weaken any remaining desire to live. She fears that making assisted death seem available might become the only thing Elfrieda can think about, even as she worries that Elfrieda might travel alone after leaving hospital.

A private request and the burden of consent

Elf­rieda later renews her request privately. She says Nic would not take her and asks Yolandi not to tell him; she believes that Nic still trusts in a medical cure and that Lottie will not give up hope. Elfrieda identifies Yolandi as the person who understands her. She also tells her sister that she is afraid to die alone and describes herself as pleading for her life. The request thus concerns not only death but also who will remain with her, whether her wishes will be heard, and whether she will have company at the end.

Yolandi cannot easily separate that appeal from the possible consequences of helping. She worries that Nic would notice Elfrieda’s absence, discover what had happened, and hate her; she fears that Lottie would be devastated, and doubts that a secret departure would work. At the same time, she does not dismiss Elfrieda’s request as merely hypothetical. Yolandi tells Julie that Elfrieda wants the two of them to go to Switzerland, while admitting that she does not want her sister to die and does not know what to do. Julie recommends waiting to see whether treatment or medication helps this time. Yolandi agrees that waiting is possible, but fears that Elfrieda could be discharged and then be gone before she could intervene.

Cost, timing, and a Toronto proposal

The Swiss option becomes concrete enough for Yolandi to look up an estimated budget: $5,263.16 for the clinic treatment and $9,210.53 for related costs, including medical expenses, official fees, and a funeral. Julie questions whether the option is meant for people who are already dying. Yolandi answers from her research that Swiss provisions also extend to mental illness and frames Elfrieda’s condition as weariness of life. The figures give the proposal a practical scale, but they do not settle Julie’s concern or Yolandi’s own moral uncertainty.

Yolandi then imagines a different immediate step. After finding the Coleridge poem associated with Elfrieda’s AMPS signature, she thinks of inviting her sister to Toronto after hospital discharge. Elfrieda could stay with Yolandi and Nora, with time to walk, talk, and rest rather than being left alone. Yolandi imagines examining the Zurich question together at greater length; Toronto would also make travel to Switzerland easier if Elfrieda still wished to go. The proposal offers companionship and a pause, but it also preserves secrecy: Yolandi considers letting no one else know until the decision has been made.

A conditional commitment

Later, Yolandi tells Elfrieda that she has a plan. Before leaving with Lottie for Tina’s funeral in Vancouver, she reassures Elfrieda that she will return and that a stay in Toronto remains possible. Yolandi says she understands that not wanting to live and wanting to die are not necessarily identical, and acknowledges that Elfrieda wants to retain grace and dignity and control over her life. She also insists, in effect, that she will keep looking for alternatives and will not stop trying while another door might remain.

The plan therefore remains conditional rather than a promise to arrange assisted death. Yolandi offers presence, a future visit, and a willingness to help, while reserving the possibility that she may continue trying to keep Elfrieda alive. Her consideration of Switzerland is significant precisely because it does not produce a clean resolution: care means taking Elfrieda’s expressed wishes seriously, but for Yolandi it also means waiting, searching for other possibilities, and fearing what might happen if she steps aside.