Emergency!1972

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?

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?