What, exactly, are registered domestic partners? I used to think I knew. And until last week, one Northeast Portland couple -- call them Luis and Patrick -- thought so, too.
Luis is 37 and grew up in Texas. Patrick, 55, graduated from Wilson High and Portland State. Long ago, Patrick heard you should spend four seasons with someone to test love. So that's what they did. Spend summer, fall, winter and spring together. In June 2008, they registered their domestic partnership. "It's very comforting to make a commitment where you know someone wants to be with you for eternity,'' Patrick said Tuesday.
And even more comforting if everyone else knows what a "domestic partnership" means, too. They were told it would convey legal protections under state law roughly equivalent to those of spouses. But gatekeepers actually get to define the term. In a moment of crisis, earth-shaking decisions can depend on what the gatekeepers know.
Or think they know.
Last week, a nurse in Oregon Health & Science University's intensive care unit shut the gate on Patrick. The nurse said he couldn't go into the intensive care unit to be with Luis, even though Luis at that moment was not expected to live.
Luis has AIDS, but doesn't want his employer to know that. (For that reason, he asked that we not use his whole name or his partner's last name.) As a result of his disease, Luis has a compromised immune system. Recently, Luis developed a pneumonia-like condition in which his lungs were filling up, and he had difficulty breathing. He felt he was suffocating.
Patrick took Luis to OHSU, and not only was he admitted to intensive care, Luis had to be placed on a ventilator. On Tuesday, April 14, things became very, very dicey. Luis was out of it. It was just at that moment that a nurse refused to let Patrick back into Luis's room. "We shouldn't have you in the room as his friend," the nurse told Patrick. "Do you know how I reach his next of kin?"
"I'm his registered domestic partner,'' Patrick told her. "Same as husband and wife." But the nurse was insistent that only a family member could fill out the forms and make the decisions that needed to be made for Luis.
Patrick had no idea what to do. Frantic, he grabbed a copy of the "Gay Yellow Pages" and started dialing attorneys' phone numbers. He finally connected to attorney Beth A. Allen.
She called OHSU's legal department and eventually -- it wasn't long in clock time, but it felt like an eternity to Patrick -- got the nurse's decision reversed. The apologies from the nurse were profuse and, as it happens, Luis made a remarkable recovery (he is still in the hospital).
On Tuesday, an OHSU representative said the nurse's apologies had been appropriate, because the nurse apparently didn't understand OHSU policy.
Letting domestic partners into ICU? "We believe in that wholeheartedly,'' she said, adding that this mistake does not say anything about OHSU per se. I actually agree with her about that.
Nevertheless, the fact that it was OHSU makes what happened even more shocking. If a nurse at one of the most progressive institutions in our state is confused about what a domestic partnership means, what does that say about the likelihood of confusion at other hospitals?
And what does it say about the rough equivalence of domestic partnership and marriage?
We know what one conveys. Among other things, instant access into an ICU.
The other one, at a time when a relationship matters most, and life is most fragile, can crumble into a piece of paper no one really understands. It can lock the door.