Randolph Mantooth credited as playing...
Paramedic John Gage
- Battalion Chief: Gage.
- Paramedic John Gage: Yes sir?
- Battalion Chief: That special training program. Remember? We were talking about it a couple of days ago?
- Paramedic John Gage: Yes sir. The para-something-or-other...
- Battalion Chief: Paramedics. The first class just finished last week.
- Paramedic John Gage: Good.
- Battalion Chief: I'm supposed to encourage all our young rescue personnel to volunteer for the next class.
- Paramedic John Gage: Yes sir. Wellll, I guess I'm just too stupid to take advantage of such an opportunity.
- Battalion Chief: I know it's work. No raise in pay. But, it just might be worthwhile.
- Paramedic John Gage: It might be, if I wanted to be an ambulance attendant; but I don't. Chief, I'm a rescue man. I trained to be a rescue man and I like being a rescue man. Now, why should I die from improvements?
- Battalion Chief: Why should you?
- Dispatcher: [tones sound] Squad 10. Truck 127. Possible high-voltage electrocution. 13270 Flower. 13270 Flower. Cross street Third. Time out, 07:51.
- Battalion Chief: You like being a rescue man.
- 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]
- Paramedic John Gage: [Gage learns that the man he rescued had worsened beyond hope in transit to the hospital because his team was not able to medically stabilize him first] Rescue, Hell! All we rescued was a corpse.
- 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.