Elfrieda’s suicide attempt

Elfrieda Von Riesen’s suicide attempt takes place on the day her opening concert with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is due to go ahead again. After a period of uncertainty and a recent farewell between the sisters, Elfrieda changes her mind about performing; instead, her mother and aunt find her in a life-threatening crisis at home. She survives and is returned to hospital, but the event makes clear that the renewed concert plan has not resolved her distress.## Background and renewed concert plans Almost two weeks after Yolandi Von Riesen said goodbye to Elfrieda in the doorway of her home in Winnipeg, the sisters’ separation has been framed by a promise to write letters. By May, the opening concert is back on. Elfrieda has changed her mind again, and Nic reports that rehearsal went well: she seems excited about opening night, though drained. The contrast between the public prospect of a performance and the private danger that follows gives the attempt its immediate reversal.

Elfrieda had asked Lottie and Tina to stay away while she prepared for the concert. They visit anyway, intending only to say hello. When no one answers the door, Lottie uses her key to enter and finds Elfrieda in the bathroom. The scene is first conveyed to Yolandi over the telephone: her mother tells her that Elfrieda is alive and conscious, and that she and Tina have called for help. The account places the attempt within a family already marked by suicide, but does not reduce it to a simple explanation or present the concert itself as its cause.

Discovery and emergency response

Lottie holds her daughter while Tina calls 911. Elfrieda asks her mother to take her to the train tracks, a request that makes the immediate danger unmistakable. Emergency responders take her back to hospital. Her condition requires intensive care and a respirator after the attempt damages her ability to breathe; her wrists are expected to recover. The attempt is therefore neither fatal nor a brief interruption: survival depends on urgent intervention, followed by a serious period of treatment.

Yolandi leaves for Winnipeg to join her mother and sister. At the hospital she finds Nic and Julie already there, and the family visits Elfrieda in small groups. Will sends a message by telephone, managing only to tell his aunt that he loves her before breaking down. When Yolandi and Julie sit beside Elfrieda, she is still connected to a breathing machine. She looks at them, shrugs, closes and reopens her eyes, and taps her forehead; Yolandi cannot determine what the gesture means. The scene offers no easy exchange or reassuring explanation. The family’s presence, touch, and silence become their means of staying with her.

Hospital aftermath

The crisis continues beyond intensive care. When Yolandi and Nic later arrive at the hospital, they cannot find Elfrieda in the ICU. A nurse explains that she has been moved to Psych 2 in the Palaveri Building, across the hospital grounds. The move marks a change in the kind of care she is receiving, but the evidence does not present discharge as immediate or the underlying danger as settled.

The attempt also unfolds amid other family emergencies. During the hospital period, Yolandi learns that Tina’s condition has worsened and that she needs urgent heart surgery. Tina later dies after the operation. These events are distinct: Tina’s death is not a result of Elfrieda’s attempt, but it compounds the strain on a family already trying to keep Elfrieda alive and present. The pressure is registered through practical acts—travel, hospital visits, arranging care, and making calls—as well as through the family’s repeated experience of sudden loss.

Meaning within the larger story

The return of the concert plan initially suggests forward motion: rehearsal has gone well, and Elfrieda appears ready to perform. The attempt overturns that expectation on opening-night day. Its placement beside her earlier changes of mind makes the concert’s resumption a fragile reprieve rather than evidence that her crisis has passed. The episode also complicates the idea that loved ones can secure her safety through devotion alone: Lottie and Tina respond immediately, and Yolandi comes as soon as she can, yet the family cannot control what Elfrieda asks for or what follows.

The novel later reveals that Elfrieda dies by suicide after reaching the railway tracks. That later death does not make this earlier rescue inconsequential: here, she survives because her mother and aunt find her and summon help. Read against the family’s history—including the suicide of Yolandi and Elfrieda’s father and the earlier loss of Tina’s daughter Leni—the attempt becomes one more recurrence in a story where care can interrupt a crisis without guaranteeing an ending. Its immediate outcome is survival; its place in the larger narrative is a painful return of danger, not a resolution.