Two more messages come in quick succession: “Patient will meet you at George’s Chicken,” a fast-food restaurant near Dundas and Sherbourne streets; and then: “Patient has been instructed to stay in his home and not go to George’s Chicken.”

The black comedy is tinged by the fact that the man had in fact cut off his penis with a Mach3 razor and flushed it down because, as he put it, his wife will never go back to him.

When Mr. Phillips first recounted the events to friends, someone said he would gladly pay $5 to hear that story. It sparked an idea for the 37-year-old father of three who has been acting since he was a teenager. He penned and performs in The Emergency Monologues, a 45-minute compilation of stories from the EMS front lines that is part of Toronto’s SummerWorks theatre festival.

There are tales that make you shudder, but some of the material begs for laughter:

• Mr. Phillips and his partner were called to the home of an elderly woman who accidentally defecated on her floor and wanted someone to pick it up. The woman called Lifeline for help and the dispatcher, unable to reach the caller’s relatives, dialed 911. Mr. Phillips recalls with mirth watching his partner call Lifeline and in a sober voice ask to speak to the person who felt cleaning up someone’s poo warranted a 911 call.

• On another call, Mr. Phillips had to climb into bed with two naked, intoxicated women and wake them up just “to make sure they didn’t die.”

• He had to be tested for flesh-eating disease after treating a woman who collapsed during an ultimate Frisbee match. The disease killed the woman, but Mr. Phillips never contracted it.

• He once had to enlist the help of a firefighter to pin down the flailing, broken arm of an Italian man who was gesticulating wildly as he spoke and sprayed blood everywhere.

“It’s not all guts and glory,” said Mr. Phillips during an interview yesterday at Mocha Mocha on the Danforth, after he biked his children to camp. He is currently based out of a downtown EMS station.

“Our day is pretty much filled with drunk homeless people. I’ve only been punched once, but that’s because I’m quick and they punch slow.”

Mr. Phillips comes from a family of musicians, and he’s also in a rock folk band called Endsville, but acting has been a mainstay in his life for more than 20 years. He got his start at 17 working in a Toronto theatre collective that created productions about social issues, such as youth and AIDS or battered women, and next month will star in a mockumentary that parodies the Survivorman reality TV show.

The Emergency Monologues is based on stories he typed on his laptop after his shift, so he could tell his children when they were old enough. Many come from his early years on the job, when a nervous excitement rose up for even the most mundane calls.

“It becomes so normal, that it just doesn’t seem interesting anymore,” he said. “You sort of have to remind yourself that not everybody just spent six hours sitting in the apartment of a dead person at Coxwell and Danforth, waiting for police to be available because it was a potential crime scene.”

For the stage performance, Mr. Phillips has put about 60 vignettes on to a wheel of misfortune; he will spin the wheel on stage, and tell whatever story is selected. The stories are between three- and eight-minutes long. “What I’m hoping is that the audience goes through the same journey that I do of wondering what is going to come up next,” he said. “And if someone really likes the show, they could see it again and it will still be a new show.”

•The Emergency Monologues runs at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, at 16 Ryerson Ave., from Aug. 7-17. Check summerworks.ca for showtimes.