Do You Remember the ‘Emergency!’ Episode Where Brackett and Gage Almost Died?
Just a few episodes into Season 2 of NBC’s hit medical drama Emergency!, fans were stunned when it looked like the show might kill off two of its most popular characters: Dr. Kelly Brackett, played by Wagon Train alum Robert Fuller, and paramedic Johnny Gage, portrayed by handsome young newcomer Randolph Mantooth.
Debuting in January 1972, Emergency! had the challenge of competing directly with CBS’s megahit All in the Family. But thanks to its gripping, realistic (and emergency-filled!) storylines and promotion of America’s then-new EMT program, the Jack Webb–produced series quickly carved out a loyal audience.
And on October 7, 1972, the episode “Virus” delivered one of the most memorable — and frightening — hours in the show’s seven seasons.
Everett Collection
What Happens in “Virus”?
In this episode, Los Angeles County paramedics Gage (Mantooth) and Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe) respond to the home of one Mr. Hollister and his daughter Jenny (starlet and former pro tennis player Cathy Lee Crosby), who is suffering from a mysterious illness. While Gage and DeSoto take her vitals, firefighter Tim Duntley (future As the World Turns star William Gray Espy) is distracted by a little monkey who also takes a shine to Gage.
Jenny, a dancer just home from a USO tour in Southeast Asia and a camping trip to Big Bear, leaves doctors Kelly Brackett (Robert Fuller) and Joe Early (Bobby Troup) scrambling to determine whether she has Asian flu, another “tropical virus” like malaria — or, courtesy of that camping trip, Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Martin Mills / TV Guide / courtesy Everett Collection
As the docs wait for lab results, DeSoto is called to another home where a boy who suffers from Meunière’s disease is trapped in the neighbor’s disturbingly high, awfully rickety backyard treehouse. Because the disease causes vertigo and hearing loss, DeSoto decides to sedate the kid before lowering him to the ground and calls in Gage, who is looking a little sideways, for help.
Back at Rampart, Jenny Hollister is going downhill fast and Firefighter Duntley is admitted with a raging fever. Brackett orders a quiet quarantine and asks nurse Dixie McCall (Julie London) to round up everyone who has been in contact with Jenny, without alarming the press.
With Duntley and Jenny fading, national virologists are called onto the case. And when Brackett summons Gage and DeSoto back to Rampart, DeSoto wonders what gives. “Could be about two paramedics who might have the plague,” Gage cracks. Oh oh.
©Everett Collection
The boys are free to go. As they drive away, they remember the monkey and start connecting some dots. Gage looks a tad worried. And the critter, who is named Cokie, is brought into Rampart, where a mask-wearing Brackett, Early and Morton check him over, while Nurse Sharon Walters, sans mask, tends to Jenny.
Brackett visits the now-conscious Jenny, who reveals that Cokie fell ill right after she bought him from an outdoor market with the help of her choreographer In the meantime, Dixie reveals that the Atlanta virologists have determined that it is indeed a strain of Asian A3 flu, and they’ve never seen anything like it.
Brackett’s willing to try whatever it takes to treat the flu, including a brand-new antiviral, and he and the more cautious Early argue over how to proceed. Needing a break, Brackett heads for the cafeteria, where he encounters the senior Hollister, who shows no sign of the virus.
As they chat, Brackett becomes dizzy. Meanwhile, an increasingly sweat-shiny Gage heads out on a call for a man stuck on a ledge. He ropes up to rappel down and save the guy, but is overcome by the virus mid-rescue.
Back at the hospital, Jenny rebounds, Duntley dies, Gage is wheeled in comatose, and Brackett’s in a bad way, too. But the doctor is still sharp enough to realize that Jenny’s quick recovery could be due to immunity from being around her pet so much. She’s still too weak to donate blood serum, but maybe Roger the Choreographer’s could. Jenny remembers that he got sick too, but just barely, and recovered even quicker than she did.
His blood serum could save the day … and it does.
A Story Rooted in Reality
Credit “Virus” in part to the writers’ imagination, and in part to a real-life epidemic that happened just a few years before the Oct. 1972 episode aired.
In 1968, an influenza A(H3N2) strain originating in China — dubbed “Hong Kong flu” or “Mao flu” in the U.S. press — swept across the globe. By the time it eased in 1970, the virus had killed more than 100,000 Americans and millions of people worldwide. Unlike the fictional outbreak, which claimed only Firefighter Duntley, the real virus took people of all ages as its victims.
There were no monkeys involved in the actual pandemic, but for some viewers in 1972, the memory of a deadly flu outbreak was still fresh. That’s why seeing beloved characters like Robert Fuller’s Dr. Brackett and Randolph Mantooth’s Johnny Gage nearly succumb to a mysterious virus made “Virus” one of the most unforgettable episodes of this still much-loved medical drama.
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