- Frank Pierce: Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you?
- Marcus: I rebuke the spirit of drugs in the name of Jesus. What's his name?
- Drummer: I.B. Bangin'.
- Marcus: What you mean I.B. Bangin'?
- Drummer: I.B. Bangin'!
- Marcus: What the hell kind of name is I.B. Bangin'?
- Drummer: I don't know his real name.
- I.B.'s Girlfriend: It's Frederick Smith.
- Marcus: Okay, Freddy...
- I.B.'s Girlfriend: It's Frederick.
- Marcus: Okay, I.B. Bangin', we're gonna bring you back from the dead.
- Frank Pierce: You said if I came in late for another shift, you'd fire me.
- Captain Barney: I'll fire you tomorrow.
- Frank Pierce: The street's not like the ER. There's no walls, no controls. To make up for that, they try to teach me how to act without thinking - like a soldier who can take apart and reassemble a gun blindfolded... I realized that my training was useful in less than ten percent of the calls and saving someone's life was rarer than that. After a while, I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply showed up.
- Frank Pierce: Oh, I see. With all the poor people of this city who wanted only to live and were viciously murdered, you have the nerve to sit here, wanting to die, and not go through with it? You make me sick!
- Tom Wall: Frank, what are you doing back there?
- Frank Pierce: I'm sick, Tom. I need a cure. Vitamin B cocktail, followed by an amp of glucose and a drop of adrenaline. Not as good as beer, but it's all I got.
- [Frank and Marcus are delivering a baby in a rundown building]
- Frank Pierce: Oh Jesus, we'd better go. Call for backup. It's coming.
- Marcus: My God, Frank, what the hell is that?
- Frank Pierce: It's three legs.
- Marcus: That's too many.
- Frank Pierce: I'd always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep. I drank every day. Help others and you help yourself, that was my motto, but I hadn't saved anyone in months. It seemed all my patients were dying. I'd waited, sure the sickness would break, tomorrow night, the next call, the feeling would drop away. More than anything else I wanted to sleep like that, close my eyes and drift away...
- Marcus: Rule Number One: Don't get involved with patients. Rule Number Two: Don't get involved with patients' daughters, you understand?
- Frank Pierce: What about Rule Number Three: Don't get involved with dispatchers named Love?
- Marcus: Now, boy, you don't know nothin' 'bout Rule Number Three. Cannot begin to understand the complexities of that rule!
- Dispatcher: 6-2 David, on the corner of 38th and 2, you'll find a three-car accident. Two taxis and a taxi. 6-2 Henry, 6-2 Henry. 487 West 22. Report of a very bad smell. No further information.
- Frank Pierce: Rose's ghost was getting closer. It had been six months since I lost her. A homeless girl, asthmatic, 18 years old. I used to block the bad calls out. I used to forget, but she wouldn't let go. And now she'd come to bear witness for all of them, all that had been lost. These spirits were part of the job. It was impossible to pass a building that didn't hold a ghost of something. The eyes of a corpse. The screams of a loved one. All bodies leave their mark. You cannot be near the newly dead without feeling it. I could handle that. What haunted me now was more savage. Spirits born half-finished. Homicides. Suicides. Overdoses. Accusing me of being there, witnessing a humiliation, which they could never forgive.
- Mary Burke: I keep thinking about how tough my father was. Now I know he had to be like that - to make us tough. 'Cause this city, it'll kill you if you're not strong enough.
- Frank Pierce: No, the city doesn't discriminate. It gets everybody.
- Dispatcher: You'll be going to the man who needs no introduction. Chronic caller of the year three straight and shooting for number four. The duke of drunk, the king of stink, our most frequent flier, Mr. Oh.
- Marcus: Dear Lord, here I am again aksing one mo' chance for a sinner. Please Lord, bring back I. B. Bangin', Lord. You have the power, Jesus. You have the might. You have the super light to spare this worthless man.
- [I. B. Bangin' sits up]
- Marcus: Rise up, I. B. Bangin' and start your life anew! Lord, O thank you, Lord.
- I.B. Bangin': What happened?
- I.B.'s Girlfriend: You fucking died, you stupid bastard! I warned you.
- Marcus: I put everything I had into saving this dumb-ass low-life suicidal. When he went down, it was like I wanted to go with him.
- Frank Pierce: That happened once in Ireland. This girl jumped off the cliffs of Moher and the wind blew her back up.
- Marcus: The wind blew her back up?
- Frank Pierce: Yeah, the wind.
- Marcus: No, that was Jesus, son.
- Frank Pierce: It was also the wind.
- Marcus: The wind, my black ass! That was Jesus.
- Marcus: Where you goin', Frank?
- Frank Pierce: I quit. I'm through.
- Marcus: Oh, you think just 'cause you quit, your ghosts gonna quit too? It don't work that way, Frank. I been there, son.
- Frank Pierce: We have rules against killing people on the streets, okay. It looks bad. There's a special room in the hospital for terminating. A nice quiet room with a big bed.
- Noel: You mean that? Why, thank you, man. Wait a minute, how? How are you gonna kill be?
- Frank Pierce: Well you have a choice: pills, injection, or gas.
- Noel: Pills, definitely pills.
- Frank Pierce: You have to keep the body going until the brain and the heart recover enough to go on their own.
- Tom Wall: Frank, what do you know? It's you and me again tonight. The rough riders, tearing up the streets, just like old times. This old bus is a warrior, Frank. I have tried to kill her, but she will not die. I have a great respect for that.
- Tom Wall: Look up, Frank. Full moon. The blood's gonna run tonight. I can feel it. Our mission: to save lives.
- Frank Pierce: Our mission is coffee, Tom. A shot of the bull, Puerto Rican espresso.
- Tom Wall: Ten-four. El Toro de Oro! Blast off!
- Marcus: Did I ever tell you about the time that white woman approached me? I said, "Ma'am, I'm a true cocksman, and I don't mix my seed." Only time you see me with a white woman when I'm holdin' her for the police." That's the truth.
- Frank Pierce: 5 or 6 in the morning is always the worst time for me. Just before dawn. Just when you've been lulled into thinking it might be safe to close your eyes for one minute. That's when I first found Rose. She was on the sidewalk, not breathing.
- Marcus: Look at these women. Can't even tell who's a hooker no more. Whatever happened to go-go boots and hot pants. They'll wear anything now.
- Tom Wall: 66-Exterminator here. We like our coffee bloody! This better be good. My partner's *dying* to help someone.
- Frank Pierce: In the last year, I'd come to believe in such things... as spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back. Spirits angry at the awkward places death had left them. I understood how crazy it was to think this way. But I was convinced that if I turned around, I'd see old man Burke... standing at the window, watching, waiting for us to finish.
- Frank Pierce: The biggest problem with not driving is whenever there's a patient in the back, you're in the back. The doors close. You're trapped.
- Dispatcher Love: 62 Young, I don't have time for all your games. Now answer me or do I have to come out there myself?
- Dispatcher Love: 62 Young, answer the radio. I have a call for you... I can't wait all night, Young. I'm holding a priority and if you don't answer, I'm gonna knock you out of service.
- Marcus: 62 Young is here, Baby, and I'm a help you out.
- Marcus: 62 Young, this is Marcus, only for you, Baby, only for you.
- Dispatcher Love: Keep it to yourself, Young.
- Frank Pierce: I washed my face with three kinds of soap, each smelling like a different season. It felt good to be in a woman's room again, especially a woman who wasn't comatose or severely disabled. I felt that perhaps I had turned a corner, like I saved someone, though I didn't know who.
- Tom Wolls: Sir, I am going to give you some medicine that is still very experimental. It's from NASA, and although the astronauts have been using it for years, we are the first service to try it. I will put this patch on your forehead like this, and in about a minute you will have to relax. You will forget all your suicidal feelings. It's very important that you wear this for a least twenty- four hours and keep checking the mirror. If the patch turns green you have to see the doctor immediately. The side effects could be fatal.
- Dr. Hazmat: I'm gonna hafta intubate because the kid's mother won't sign the Do Not Resuscitate. Mercy killing doesn't translate well in Spanish.
- Frank Pierce: [listening to the radio] Hey, it's Love!
- Marcus: Yep, she only works when I'm workin'.
- Frank Pierce: I heard you and Love went on a blind date.
- Marcus: Yeah.
- Frank Pierce: She hit you with a bottle?
- Marcus: Why you gotta bring that up? She loved me like no woman ever has.
- Dispatcher: Respond to a 10-22, four flight residential, 417 West 32, 77-David at 177 West 24. There's a woman who says a roach crawled in her ear. Can't get it out. Says she's going into cardiac arrest.
- Nurse Constance: Sir, you say you've been snorting cocaine for three days and now you feel as if your heart is beating too fast and you would like for us to help you. Well, to tell you the truth, I don't see why we should. I mean, correct me if I am wrong here, if I'm mistaken. Did we sell you the cocaine? Did we push it up your nose?
- Frank Pierce: I had to concentrate to keep my mind from wandering off on these short trips. It was the neighborhood I grew up in and where I'd worked most as a paramedic. And it held more ghosts per square foot than any other.
- Frank Pierce: Do you have any music?
- Mary Burke: What?
- Frank Pierce: Music. I think it helps if you play something he liked.
- Mary Burke: John. Play the Sinatra.