It was mandatory that I, an EMS professional, go to see Bringing Out the Dead, starring Martin Scorsese as Director and Nicholas Cage as Actor. We went to the matinee, and found two other people in the entire theater. We said hi as we walked down the aisle past them -- it seemed rude not to.

I did not think much of the movie. It provoked little more than passive viewership from me.

The film was immensely satisfying to me in one regard: it did not convince me that the metaphoric value of Emergency Medicine has been so thoroughly mined that another book (say, mine) cannot be extracted from the same vein. Scorsese used EMS to stand for many things, but ultimately I felt like the movie failed to snuggle up to the real and gooey mystery of the field. It failed, somehow, to ask the most powerful question, and so the answer it received was just as simple.

Will my book be better? I'll tell you when it's written. Probably not. If I could fix this with words I might not be on an ambulance in the painfully early morning, hovering over suffering like it was a campfire.

Saturday night Susan had an informal dinner for a small group of friends. This was no spontaneous get-together -- it was an obligation to an HIV-prevention organization for which she serves on the Board. On this evening, all the Board members were supposed to invite people to their homes as a sort of minor-league fundraiser -- each partygoer would ideally chip in some moolah to support the valuable work of the organization. It was basically an HIV-prevention Tupperware party. All those invited knew what the deal was; some of them work with other organizations that we, in turn, will be asked to support in the future.

I couldn't attend, naturally, because I had a duty night at the rescue squad, my own personal obligation.

In my absence, I am told, talk turned to my squad and the significant demands that it makes on its members. You wouldn't think that an all-volunteer organization could ask so much of people who are under no real obligation to show up. In addition to an overnight shift each week, all members are given a fundraising quota that we must meet during a three-month "Fall Drive." During fall drive, our response area is divided up into section maps that are assigned to each crew, and we all head out for some door-to-door begging action. Many folks who have lived in the area a while know the deal when a uniformed rescue squad member shows up on the porch -- they take the little informational booklet we offer and promise to send a check in the attached envelope. Members write their names on the envelopes, and the squad uses this to track how much each person has raised. If you fail to raise your quote by the November membership meeting, you are kicked out. There is no mercy in this policy. I hear that a few people are nixed ever year. I, for one, was scared into fulfilling my quota a couple weeks ago.

As draconian as it may be, this system enables the squad to run a very busy (and free) service with community contributions, consuming no tax dollars. In a way, the yearly culling of members probably insures that only the more serious and dedicated (and in some cases, hard-core) volunteers remain.

Just why it works is a topic of frequent and animated discussion in our house. The folks who came over to dinner in my absence apparently hashed it over a few times. Many of them work for organizations that must constantly raise money (from foundations or donations) in order to exist, and where attracting and retaining volunteers or unpaid Board members is a persistent source of frustration.

The unfortunate conclusion is that the squad can demand so much of us because we all know we'd do anything to stay in the back of that ambulance. The people at out house Saturday night speculated that anything that routinely exposes you to blood and vomit must seem worthwhile -- otherwise why would one continue doing it? They vowed to have more puking at their next Board meetings.