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During an emergency call for cardiac arrest, the call-taker delivers requests and seeks to recruit the caller in a joint project: performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) while waiting for the ambulance. Based on a collection of 371 requests during French emergency calls, this paper investigates the institutional imprint on requests addressed to the caller. The linguistic design of requests differs from that observed in ordinary conversation among adults, with important variations depending on whether the caller is a layperson or a health care professional. Emergency calls are an extreme case of high legitimacy to request action, as seen in the call-taker’s use of imperatives (mettez-le au sol, “put him on the floor”), declarative structures in the present (vous le mettez au sol, “you put him on the floor”), and future (vous allez le mettre au sol, “you are going to put him on the floor”). Call-takers modulate their requests according to the deontic contingencies they identify, sometimes by means of presequences, but show little orientation toward epistemic contingencies.