A nurse's heartfelt response to the Supreme Court's decision to legalise same-sex marriage has become a viral hit on Facebook.
Trish Gorman, from Pennsylvania, posted publicly about her experience treating a gay man 20 years ago. The man's long-term partner was denied visitation rights by his mother, who hadn't seen her son for years because of his sexuality.
Gorman's moving story read: "20 or so years ago, I was a staff nurse in a trauma ICU. We had one patient come in who had a life-threatening head injury from a car crash.
"Most patients that come in in this condition receive a number and a fake name -'unid-1234' - until we can track down their family. Well, the first person we tracked down was this guy's mother, so we called her in. She was in charge of all the medical decisions we made for this guy. It was up to her when he had surgery, if we resuscitated him if his heart stopped - all kinds of things.
"It was also up to her who we called in case of an emergency and who we allowed to come visit. Well, turns out, this mother hadn't seen her son in over twenty years. She had disowned him because he was gay and because he had fallen in love with a man and decided to live with him. Anyway, our hands were tied.
"We eventually tracked down the guy he'd been living with for the past twenty years. They had bought a house together.
They had purchased furniture together. They had built a life together.
"The patient's 'family' had already established a list of rules of who could and could not visit. The man's life partner was not on the list. We had to - legally - comply with everything the mother asked of us. One of her most adamant requests was that the life partner of this man not be allowed to visit.
"We had to comply. We had no legal choice. I spent weeks leaving work and buying a coffee for the poor man in the lobby who was crying because he couldn't visit his partner of twenty years. I couldn't even legally tell him of his partner's condition because of HIPPA violations.
"My hands were tied. And my heart was broken. I was going to spend the rest of my life fighting for marriage equality.
This SCOTUS vote means more to me than any of you will ever know."
Gorman's post has been shared over 1050 times.