Emergency! (TV Series)

The Wedsworth-Townsend Act (1972)

Randolph Mantooth: Paramedic John Gage

Photos 

Quotes 

• 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.