Kevin Tighe credited as playing...
Paramedic Roy DeSoto
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: This application isn't signed.
- Paramedic John Gage: I wanted to talk to you first.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Sure. What do you want to know?
- Paramedic John Gage: You went through that first class of special medical training, right?
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Right.
- Paramedic John Gage: If you rolled on a rescue call now. Today. Could you use that training to treat a victim on the scene?
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: No.
- Paramedic John Gage: Then why should I, or anybody else, spend twelve weeks, or twelve minutes, learning to do what we can't do?
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Because you said *today*. There's a bill before the state legislature right now, Assembly Bill PM 11307, that will permit qualified fire department personnel to administer medical assistance in the field.
- Paramedic John Gage: *If* it's passed.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: You've asked a few questions before you came in here, didn't you?
- Paramedic John Gage: I want to find out if it's a job, or just a title.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: It's a job all right. It's going to be the most important advance in emergency medicine in the last fifty years.
- Paramedic John Gage: Going to be. Well, maybe you'd better just hang-on to that application until it is.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: That'll be too late. We're already late. Gage, there are over six-and-a-half million people in Los Angeles County right now and not nearly enough doctors to handle them even under normal conditions. When you get into an emergency situations: freeway accidents, drownings, heart attacks and a thousand others, people are dying at the scene! People who could stay alive if there was somebody at the spot who knew what to do!
- Paramedic John Gage: But they won't let you fuction.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: They will. They'll have to. Look, if that bill passes in the Legislature today, do you know how many people we have ready for the job?
- [Gage shakes his head "no"]
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Just me, and five other guys who took the training course. Six men for six-and-a-half million people. No, we can't wait for the go ahead and then train our people. If there's once chance in a million that bill will be passed, we have to be ready.
- Paramedic John Gage: Use your pen?
- [Gage signs the application]
- Nurse Dixie McCall: Kell.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Yes?
- Nurse Dixie McCall: 51 on the link.
- [indicates communication radio link to field paramedics]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: What do they want?
- Nurse Dixie McCall: Help.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: [into transmitter link] 51, go.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: [over biophone] We have a male, tunnel worker, approximate age 60, was trapped under a digging machine. Patient had a cardiac history. He is now diaphoretic. Vital signs: 80 over 50; rate: 100 and irregular; respirations: 12 and shallow.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Do you have your EKG hooked up?
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Affirmitive, doctor.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Send me something so I can get a reading.
- [turns on EKG printer]
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: This will be Lead 2.
- [turns on ELG transmitter]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: [reads EKG strip] Multiple PVC's.
- [sees reading change]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: V-Tac.
- [reading changes again]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: He's starting to fibrillate.
- [to DeSoto]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Defibrillate! 400 watt/seconds!
- Nurse Dixie McCall: Kell! They're not authorized to...
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: [into link] Are you receiving? Come on, 51! You've got a dying man on your hands.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Doctor, if we administer shock and we lose him...
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: You're losing him right now!
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: You said yourself it wasn't worth risking the program for one case!
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: I just heard from Walski in Sacramento. The bill passed late last night.
- Nurse Dixie McCall: Kell... You never heard from Walski.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Yeah, well I should have.
- Nurse Dixie McCall: Do you know what you're doing? If that bill doesn't pass Kell, they'll crucify you.
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: [looking at EKG strip] I don't care about that. We're not at a party or talking to a committee. That man's dead right now.
- [into communication link]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Zap him, dammit! Zap him!
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: [watches as Gage applies the defibrillator paddles to the man's chest] 400 watt/seconds!
- [Gage shocks him]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: [reads strip] No conversion.
- [into link]
- Dr. Kelly Brackett M.D.: Hit him again!
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: 400 watt/seconds!
- [Gage shocks the man again. At the hospital, Brackett sees the EKG adopt a normal rhythm]
- Paramedic John Gage: Sixth and Kenmore. That's over near 10's. Hang a left, I know a shortcut.
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: I know a better one. We swing right to Rampart Emergency.
- Paramedic John Gage: What for?
- Paramedic Roy DeSoto: Get a nurse on board. You forgot: we're the impotent wonders.