There would have been 6,552 babies. Over a span of eighteen years, 6,552 hearts would have beat unconscious, cocooned in the blank swim of their mothers’ wombs. 204 of those babies would have been born blue, then slapped awake. 81 would have died. But 6,471 infants would have taken their first gasps of oxygen as they slid from echoing caves—they’d have stretched their thrashing limbs into Jenny’s waiting hands.
