The guard for the coma-ward really didn't have much to do. He'd pace a bit, check in on the rooms, make sure the monitors and machines were working properly, and then go back to sitting on his ass on the chair the hospital had provided for him. These guys were not exactly the lives of the party, as the vast majority of them had been dead-to-the-world for years. There was this one kid in one of the rooms. Horrible accident. Six or seven loads of rebar for a construction site coming down on the poor boy's head. Well, and every other part of him. Crushed his legs, his arms, part of his chest. Reconstructive surgery had - for the most part - taken care of the rest of that. Bones had healed, grown together, the pins in his arm had long since been removed. But the kid was still there. In the ward. Out like a light. For two-and-a-half whole years. But still, interesting story aside, not a single one of these kids, adults, or elders was going to wake up...
Which was why he was so surprised when one of the room-monitors started screeching at him in that annoying way it had when something was really, really important, and needed his attention immediately. What he saw on the video-monitor actually startled him so badly that he knocked over his chair in the scramble to get to the call-button.
Shortly, half-a-dozen nurses and two doctors were rocketing down the hall toward the room where the kid with the head-trauma had been sitting like a sleeping beau. He was awake. So the guard did his job, and dialed in the contact number they had on file for him. As it rang, he thought fondly about his vacation in two weeks. Maybe he'd just head off and never come back.
"Hello? Mrs. Veritas? This is Hopehome Hospital. I'm contacting you on behalf of a patient here that you are recorded as the sole contact for? Casey? ... He's awake, ma'am."