Elfrieda asks Yoli to take her to Switzerland to end her life

Elfrieda asks Yolandi to take her to Switzerland to end her life, turning their bond as sisters into an immediate and painful question of responsibility. The request begins with a refusal, not a plan: Yolandi says she will not take Elfrieda, while Elfrieda pleads that this is the last thing she is asking of her. The scene establishes both the intensity of Elfrieda’s wish and the limits of what Yolandi can accept at that moment. Their exchange does not settle the question; it sets in motion Yolandi’s struggle to understand what help, love, and complicity might mean.

The Request and Yolandi’s Refusal

Elfrieda raises Switzerland abruptly, after Yolandi has been talking about her life in Toronto. Yolandi describes the question as arriving out of the blue. Its suddenness gives no sense of a negotiated decision: the request breaks into an ordinary conversation and changes its subject at once. Elfrieda asks for a specific act from her sister, and the destination makes clear that she is asking Yolandi to help her pursue an assisted death.

Yolandi answers no. Elfrieda asks her to do this one last thing and begs her to reconsider. Yolandi resists the language of finality as well as the request itself, objecting to the phrase one last thing as morbid. When Elfrieda asks whether Yolandi loves her, Yolandi says that she does, but treats that love as a reason not to agree. Elfrieda counters that genuine love might require taking her, making their affection the ground on which they reach opposing conclusions rather than a comfort that resolves the conflict.

The disagreement briefly turns on whether Elfrieda qualifies as terminally ill. Yolandi asks whether a terminal illness is required; Elfrieda says that she has one, and Yolandi disputes the claim. The exchange leaves the medical and moral meaning of terminal illness unsettled. Elfrieda then says her sister’s name, whispers, mouths a plea, and Yolandi looks away. That gesture marks the scene’s immediate impasse: Yolandi hears the appeal but does not grant it.

Research and Possible Routes

The refusal does not end Yolandi’s consideration of the request. Later, after learning that Nic is going to Spain, she searches online for Nembutal there and finds little relevant information. She also looks up assisted death for people with mental illness. Her research leads her to understand Swiss law as allowing assistance where there is no selfish motive, and as not restricting access to Swiss citizens. She notes that the option has not been used often. These are the findings as Yolandi understands them, and they turn Switzerland from a place in Elfrieda’s plea into a possible course of action she can investigate.

Yolandi weighs two routes. One would involve Mexico and obtaining Nembutal there; she imagines conditions intended to keep Elfrieda’s choice her own, including having her open the bottle herself and avoiding any encouragement. Even in her own thinking, however, the boundary around encouragement seems unclear. The alternative is Zurich, where she believes the process could be legal, although doctors might decide that Elfrieda’s suffering did not justify assisted death. Neither route is a simple solution: each would require Nic and Lottie to agree, and each raises questions about Yolandi’s responsibility for what happens.

She also considers what telling Elfrieda might do. If she explained that she was exploring Mexico or Switzerland, Elfrieda might focus entirely on the possibility of dying, leaving even a small hope of living to disappear. At the same time, if Elfrieda were discharged, she might travel alone. Yolandi imagines that Nic would notice missing money and try to stop her, but recognizes that this would defeat the purpose of ensuring Elfrieda was not alone at the end. Her reasoning therefore remains suspended between safeguarding her sister, respecting her request, and fearing that either disclosure or concealment could alter Elfrieda’s choices.

The Legal Argument Between Sisters

The Swiss possibility resurfaces in a conversation with Julie. Yolandi says she has searched for the clinic in Zurich but does not know what it would cost. Julie doubts that the clinic is intended for someone who is not already dying. Yolandi argues that Swiss law also covers people with mental illness and invokes the category she has encountered in her research, weariness of life. She says Elfrieda could be understood as dying in that sense. The exchange shows Yolandi trying to translate her sister’s sustained despair into the terms she believes the law recognizes, while Julie remains uncertain about whether that interpretation fits.

This argument does not establish that Elfrieda would qualify, that a clinic would accept her, or that Yolandi decides to take her. Rather, it records how legal possibility and personal judgment become entangled. Yolandi’s research offers a potential framework, but it cannot answer the question that animates the request: whether helping Elfrieda would honor her wishes or abandon the possibility that she might continue living. Her effort to imagine procedural conditions cannot remove the ethical uncertainty at its centre.

Unresolved Request and Aftermath

The request is never shown being carried out. Later, after Elfrieda has died, Yolandi returns to the possibility of Zurich while discussing the disposition of her sister’s ashes with Nic. She had wanted to keep some ashes in Toronto, but Nic did not want them divided; they are buried beneath a large tree in Elmwood Cemetery in Winnipeg. Lottie had suggested burial beside the family’s father in East Village, but Nic says Elfrieda had expressly not wanted to be buried there. The disagreement over location preserves a distinction between the family’s wishes and Elfrieda’s own stated wishes, even after her death.

Yolandi tells Nic that he did everything possible, but privately remains unsure that no one was to blame. She thinks that Elfrieda would have died peacefully and not alone in Zurich, and concludes that she failed her. This is Yolandi’s retrospective judgment, not proof that taking Elfrieda would have been possible or would have produced the outcome she imagines. The book leaves that counterfactual open. The request’s lasting force lies in that unresolved gap between a sister’s plea, the refusal made in the moment, and the grief through which Yolandi later reconsiders it.