Tommy's team face off against a private medical contractor, while Owen hits it off with a woman he met at a fundraiser.
Tropes:
- Always Someone Better: The 126 paramedics view Paragon as this, considering it out-performed and bought out two counties’ EMSs with its more upgraded equipment and extra customer service features.
- Am I Just a Toy to You?: Owen instantly hits it off with Kendra Harrington, an heiress, but initially worries that she’s only paying him $140 grand (100 grand in a check, 40 grand in a Venmo transfer) as glorified sexual favors. She offendedly tells him that that isn’t the case once she realizes Owen thinks this.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Pearce Risher is an eager worker for Paragon— though that changes at the end.
- Buttercup makes a brief appearance during Owen and Kendra’s second date.
- Continuity Nod:
- During the cancer fundraiser, Carlos tells one of the rich attendees about the time he and Iris were kidnapped by the same serial killer (“Cry Wolf” and “Abandoned”). When the woman confuses that story for one with a stalker, TK corrects that Owen’s story (“Negative Space”) was the one with said stalker.
- Eye Scream: Downplayed. One of the callers, Edith, unwittingly leaves her contact lenses in her eyes to the point that the pressure from the buildup gives her a headache. Though it’s not terribly gruesome, Tommy and TK still find and extract a disturbing amount of disposable contacts before Edith feels better.
- Facial Horror: Downplayed with Pearce’s wounds from the explosion; some of his face has second-degree burns, and one of his eyebrows is singed off, but Tommy’s successful field surgery to his collapsed lung ensures that he’ll make a full recovery.
- High-Pressure Blood: Dan, who was recently treated for dialysis, accidentally gets his catheter wiring caught in another passenger’s basket, and starts violently bleeding from his thigh when pulling it free. The blood loss nearly kills him before Tommy agrees to let Pearce treat him with stored O-type blood on their ambulance.
- Laser-Guided Karma: As it turns out, Paragon has been cutting costs whenever it can, resulting in inconsistent medical equipment quality that Pearce has pointed out multiple times. Sure enough, a faulty oxygen machine results in an ambulance explosion that nearly kills him, his partner, and a perfume factory worker; when his boss visits him at the hospital, Pearce dishes some karma back by promptly refusing Paragon’s get-well gift set and suing for $15 to $20 million dollars.
- The Nose Knows:
