Wake the Guard Beside You
Hospitals keep buying safety technology and then not switching it on. That gap, not a missing gadget, is the argument at the center of this song.
The stories behind Wake the Guard Beside You
- The Real Fix Isn't Another Purchase Order: A Perspective on "Wake the Guard Beside You" — Hospitals keep buying safety technology and then not switching it on. That gap, not a missing gadget, is the argument at the center of this song.
- Liner Notes: Comparing the Four Takes of "Wake the Guard Beside You" — This is the third of four recorded takes on the same gothic-tinged duet, and it's the one that swaps grand piano and heavy guitar for a delicate, synth-pop build.
- "Wake the Guard Beside You": A Field Guide to the Annual Hazard List It's Named On — The song's real subject sits at number six on an independent nonprofit's annual ranking of the field's biggest patient-safety hazards, a list hospitals use to set next year's priorities.
- "Wake the Guard Beside You" Is About Safety Tech Hospitals Already Own — The gothic metal duet imagines an operating room's own unused medication-safety alerts as a guard that just needs someone to flip the switch.
Lyrics
I was installed before you
ever knew my name
A net beneath the table
Waiting to be claimed
Every dose you're given, I could check it twice
A soft alert, a warning, before it rolls the dice
But the switch stayed quiet,
folded in the file
The safest hand in the room, waiting in denial
Wake the god God beside you
Don't let it sleep tonight
The night one's always with you
Just turn it toward the light
Just turn it toward the light
We trusted our hands, we trusted the routine
Never thought to ask what the system might have seen
Not one thing broken, nothing built to fail
Just a lantern in the corner we forgot to
unveil Wake the god
beside you
Don't let it sleep tonight
The night was always with you
Just turn it toward the light
I don't need thanks, I don't need your praise
Just turn me on before the next long day
The safest room isn't the one with no alarm
It's the one that finally listens when
it's won
Like the guard beside you
Don't let it sleep tonight
The net was always with you
Just turn it on
For the love
I'll be here waiting
However long it takes
Turn me on, turn me on
Before the morning breaks
