A fictional work contains a cliffhanger if it ends with a central character finding herself in perilous circumstances. The goal of this paper is to establish that authors’ narrative intentions determine what happens next in works that end in cliffhangers when no sequel is produced. To this end, I argue from the fact that a sequel written by the original author would uniquely resolve a fictional work that ends in a cliffhanger to the conclusion that the author’s narrative intentions serve as truth-makers for claims about what happens next in the absence of some such sequel.

We report the results of follow-up of the complete cohort of Norwegian children born in the period from 1987 through 1998 in whom there was the intention to treat surgically hypoplasia of the left heart using the Norwood sequence of operations. Of the 54 children, 21 are alive. Of these, 15 have been extensively studied, while the medical state of all the remaining survivors is known from reports from other hospitals. Of the survivors, the majority have reasonably acceptable cardiac and haemodynamic function, but significant neurological and neuropsychological morbidity is identified within the group as a whole, which requires special attention from qualified personnel of various kinds.