[Verse 1] Nineteen forty-nine, two names on a single ledger, Collett and Edwards counting chambers, calling out the order, Type One, Two, Three, Four, how the pulmonary vessels scatter, Their tally built from autopsy tables, small and scattered matter, A few dozen hearts can't hold every child's own tempo, Read it close, the bias hides inside the echo. [Chorus] Collett counts it, Van Praagh doubts it, McGoon stitches it, Ebert tracks it out, Four papers, one long river running through the truncus, Read between the numbers, that's the lesson meant for us. [Verse 2] Sixty-five, Van Praagh redraws the river's boundary, Splits the septal story, weighs embryology against anatomy, A-one to A-four, the VSD becomes the compass needle, Some called it splitting hairs, others crowned it regal, Two schools of thought, each holding half a candle, The map depends on which hand grips the handle. [Chorus] Collett counts it, Van Praagh doubts it, McGoon stitches it, Ebert tracks it out, Four papers, one long river running through the truncus, Read between the numbers, that's the lesson meant for us. [Verse 3] Walk the quiet halls where glass jars keep their vigil, Autopsy registers in copper ink, fragile as a hymnal, Specimen four-forty-two, a heart that never rounded, Museums as the witness stand where every diagnosis gets grounded, Each catalog card, a small anonymous confession, History's stethoscope pressed against the collection. [Verse 4] Mayo built the tunnel, McGoon's valve set deep inside it, Great Ormond Street slowed the timing, watched the newborn survive it, Soviet clinics worked in parallel, their papers slow to travel, Cold winters kept the echo films from crossing gravel, Same defect, three separate schools of patience, Compare the outcomes, never just equations. [Bridge] Ebert, eighty-four, traced them years past cutting, Late conduits calcify, the growing heart keeps outgrowing what we're trusting. Whose consent could speak for an infant on the table? Learning curves cost lives before the data turned stable, Name it plainly, never erase it in the telling, Innovation often wore the mask of knowing, not of knelling. [Chorus] Collett counts it, Van Praagh doubts it, McGoon stitches it, Ebert tracks it out, Four papers, one long river running through the truncus, Read between the numbers, that's the lesson meant for us. [Outro] Every register, every archived breath, Teaches the surgeon what the paper left unsaid, Four names, one truncus, history still runs ahead.
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