Seconal

Seconal is a drug Yolandi Von Riesen recalls while searching for a way to respond to her sister Elfrieda Von Riesen’s suicidal despair. It becomes a concrete name inside a crisis otherwise expressed through confusion, fear, and questions of responsibility: Yolandi remembers it as a potentially lethal drug, but the passages show no attempt to obtain or use it. Its significance lies in how the recollection sharpens the distance between knowing that a means exists and choosing what to do for someone who asks for help dying.

Recalled in a Moment of Crisis

Driving down Corydon Avenue to meet Nic, Tina Loewen, and her mother for dinner, Yolandi has forgotten which restaurant they chose. As she searches for its sign, her thoughts turn to death and to what she remembers about barbiturates. The ordinary errands of the evening—finding the restaurant, recalling the reservation, wondering whether they had arranged to sit on the terrace—share her attention with the urgent question of how her sister might die.

That train of thought reaches back to Yolandi’s earlier work as a freelance journalist. She had travelled to Portland, Oregon, to report on assisted suicide; while there, she learned that her cousin Leni’s body had been found in the Fraser River after Leni’s suicide. Yolandi now tries to recall a drug combination associated with that earlier subject. Later in the drive, she identifies Seconal in her own recollection. The passage makes the drug part of a memory shaped by both journalism and family loss, without establishing that Seconal was used in Leni’s death.

A Name Among Possible Responses

Yolandi’s thoughts about Seconal belong to a wider, panicked search for options. She imagines asking Nic, who works in health science, for help, and considers whether a doctor, pharmacist, or criminal network might provide access to drugs. These are speculative thoughts, not actions: the scene emphasizes that she does not know what to do and is frightened by the consequences of helping her sister die. She leaves messages for Finbar asking whether she could be charged with murder, then realizes she is not even sure what kind of law he practises.

The recollection of Seconal does not resolve Yolandi’s dilemma. She worries that Elfrieda may not truly want to die, wonders what her mother would think, and imagines what would happen to her daughter Nora if Yolandi were imprisoned. A text exchange with Nora about a friend sleeping over briefly interrupts these fears with a familiar dispute about household rules. The shift does not settle the question; it places the abstract prospect of death beside the continuing demands of family life.

From Drug Searches to the Swiss Question

Elsewhere, Yolandi searches online for Nembutal in Spain and for information about assisted death for people with mental illness. She understands Swiss law to allow assistance in some circumstances, including for noncitizens, and sees why Elfrieda has asked her to go to Switzerland. Yolandi weighs that possibility against other imagined plans, while recognizing uncertainty about the law, the approval process, and her own responsibility. Her research concerns options beyond Seconal; it does not turn the drug recalled during the drive into a plan she carries out.

When Yolandi tells Julie she has looked up a Swiss clinic in Zurich, Julie questions whether the option is meant only for people who are already dying. Yolandi replies that, as she understands it, Swiss law also recognizes what is described as weariness of life. The exchange keeps legal possibility distinct from moral certainty. Earlier, when Elfrieda begs Yolandi to take her to Switzerland, Yolandi refuses. Seconal’s presence in the story therefore marks the frightening proximity of a remembered means, a sister’s request, and a decision Yolandi cannot treat as merely technical.

Narrative Significance

The drug’s importance is chiefly associative: its name connects Yolandi’s present crisis to her earlier reporting, Leni’s death, and the family’s recurring confrontation with suicide. The scene’s movement between restaurant details, legal questions, a daughter’s text messages, and the recalled drug conveys how the crisis inhabits ordinary thought rather than remaining separate from it.

Seconal also differs from the Swiss clinic Yolandi later researches. One appears in her distressed recollection of a lethal means; the other becomes a possible legal framework that she investigates and debates with Julie. Neither name supplies an answer. Together, they expose the gap between a person’s wish to die, a relative’s fear of causing harm, and the difficult question of whether assistance can be both lawful and right.