Switzerland enters the story as the setting for Dean Barton's attempted rehabilitation after the shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down. His placement there joined a boarding-school education to the hope of experimental medical treatment, but it did not restore his ability to walk.

School and Treatment

Dean was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland, a few miles from a progressive hospital specializing in experimental treatments for spinal-cord injuries. The proximity made the location part of a plan to pursue treatment while he attended school; the stated goal was for him to walk again.

Outcome and Narrative Role

Dean never walked again. His later fame came through a different route: he wrote the international bestseller Learning to Fly and became a well-regarded motivational speaker. Switzerland therefore marks the setting of an unsuccessful effort to change the physical consequences of his injury, before Dean's public identity developed around his writing and speaking.