Altered Lives

Charlene Strong was on her way home in a pounding Seattle winter storm when the call came from her partner, Kate Fleming. Sounding stressed, Fleming told her that a rain was flooding down a hillside and into the couple's basement, where Fleming, an audiobook narrator, was at work in her recording studio. What happened over the next half hour cost Fleming her life and changed Strong's forever. As the rain poured down, a flood of water cascaded down the slope in their wooded neighborhood and into the house. The basement began filling with water. Fleming called again a few minutes later to say that she was stuck in the windowless studio, with water rising rapidly. Something, she said, must have fallen and blocked the door.

When a panicked Strong arrived minutes later, she couldn't force open the studio door, which was clamped shut by the force of the water. She tried to slash into the plaster wall with a knife, forgetting that the couple had added an extra layer of sheet rock for soundproofing. As Strong struggled outside the door, Fleming called 911 on her cell phone. But the water was rising so quickly that in a matter of minutes, Strong was submerged and had to grope for the safety of the stairwell.

"I knew she was underwater by then," said Strong. "And nothing would budge." Long minutes passed before rescue workers arrived and cut a hole in the bedroom floor. A fireman jumped into the black water below to retrieve a comatose Fleming.

Frantic efforts produced a pulse. An ambulance raced Fleming to the hospital, with Strong close behind. At the door of the hospital emergency room, a social worker informed her that only family members were allowed inside. When Strong protested that she was Fleming's partner, the social worker said that under Washington state law, same-sex partners did not qualify as family. Only an urgent call to Fleming's sister in Virginia cleared the way to get Strong through the doors. Ninety minutes later, Fleming died, with Strong at her side.

The nightmare didn't end there. The next day the man handling the funeral arrangements insisted on dealing with Fleming's mother, though Strong told him she was Fleming's spouse. "He said, 'You don't have any rights in the state of Washington'." says Strong. "I left the room and started crying."

Together for 10 years, the couple had held a commitment ceremony that was not officially binding but a symbol of their relationship. "Kate was my wife, and I was her wife, and that's the way we always thought of each other," said Strong.