General Hospital January 1978

Written by: Richard & Suzanne Holland / Douglas Marland

Produced by: Tom Donovan / Gloria Monty

On Monday, January 16th, the soap expanded to 60 minutes, airing from 3:00 to 4:00.

Alan Quartermaine had been summoned to a meeting in New York by the chemical corporation which was considering setting up its executive center in Port Charles. All indications were that the decision would be positive, making a new Cardiac Wing at General Hospital more suitable to the sudden population growth than the helicopter relay service Alan felt would be adequate. Alan telephoned Monica to ask her to cancel a scheduled test-run helicopter flight he had set up with Rick Webber as part of a demonstration of the plan he had been prepared to recommend. Dr. Gail Adamson was a witness as Monica lied to Alan, making it clear to Gail when she hung up, that despite the threatening weather, and Alan's specific orders to the contrary, she intended to go ahead with the flight, substituting herself for Alan.

That evening, Rick and Lesley Webber were to host a holiday party which Lesley had decided to go ahead with despite her depression - which she gave out to be illness - for the past few days over her unhappy situation with her daughter Laura.

Laura told Scotty Baldwin that she intended to ignore Lesley’s messages asking her to be home early that day before the party, saying that David Hamilton could help Les with the last minute preparations but she needed time to think of a way to keep Lesley from checking further into the prescription records at Mercy Hospital Clinic and learning that she was referred there by Monica. She arranged to join Scotty, his father Lee, and Dr. Gail Adamson to drive over together, arriving after the first guests were there and intending to give Lesley no opportunity to talk to her as she would have to change into suitable party clothes. By the time they arrived, Lesley had learned that Rick had not been back to the hospital and Gail murmured to Lee Baldwin that she could strangle Monica when Dorrie called back to relay a message from the flight base that the helicopter was overdue in a heavy snowstorm and when last heard from, the pilot was looking for a place to put down to wait out the storm.

After an anxious wait with a houseful of guests, Lesley heard that Rick, Monica and the helicopter pilot had made it to Lake Forrest ranger station where they had made radio contact and intended to spend the night. Laura had been so upset by Lesley's unhappiness that Lesley gently apologized to her, saying that she had been accusing when she just should have asked what she wanted to know. When she questioned Laura, she was told that she heard about the clinic through friends but when Lesley asked who was the doctor who prescribed the pills, Laura mentioned the name of the doctor who examined her and Leslie did not detect the distinction.

After Monica and Rick returned to Port Charles, Monica arranged to have a reporter from the Daily Record interview Rick about the fact that their pilot had hurt his arm and Rick had flown the helicopter out.

Alan Quartermaine, after seeing the paper and talking with Rick, asked Monica whether he did or did not cancel that helicopter run. He went on to say that the whole trip was unnecessary to the survey and he was then reading about her as if she was some heroine who risked her life on a rescue mission. He told her evidently she couldn’t obey orders and make decisions that weren’t based upon personal gain. Monica told Alan that she would not stand there and be treated like a school girl and walked out, but to Gail Adamson she admitted that she arranged the whole thing on nothing more than a whim. She insisted that Rick was ancient history and confided to Gail that she had been thinking Alan could give her a life she never knew existed.

Heather Grant had moved into the apartment Dr. Jeff Webber leased for her when he hoped to bring her and their baby son Stephen Lars back from New York. Jeff had been told that the baby died from pneumonia when Heather was ill with the flu in N.Y., but the adopted son of Peter and Diana Taylor, Peter Jr. – called P.J. – was really his son. 

Heather, who paid for the forged documents necessary out of the $10,000 settlement Peter and Diana believed had been made with the child's grandmother, had been frightened by strange, silent, and finally threatening phone calls warning her to leave town. The calls had been made by Lana Holbrook – Holden - a jealous psychotic, who was in love with Jeff, in her fashion. Dr. Peter Taylor had urged Jeff, who was determined to check into Lana's background in Canton, New York, to pretend to go along with Lana's expressed wish that he not try to check into her "sister" Lisa's medical history or the source of the report of Lisa's death, because Peter was worried about Lana's violent streak, and needed a few more sessions with her to make things clear to him. Peter had not told Jeff the full extent of Lana's hatred of Heather, but when Jeff called from Canton saying that there was no trace of a "Carrie Simpson," Lana's supposed Aunt who had signed the telegram reporting Lisa's death, or of an L. Holden, to whose account it was charged, Peter told Jeff to see him for a conference as soon as he got back.

Just before Jeff left town, he was having dinner with Heather, and Lana, overhearing their date arrangements, got into Heather's apartment, removed some pictures of Stephen Lars, and threw them out into the snow. Later she visited Heather because she had called her once and spoke as Lisa, the gentle side of the split personality phenomenon that existed side-by-side with Lana's bitter violence. She wanted to impress Heather that she had been having an attack and was calling to locate Jeff, and that Heather had been mistaken in thinking she heard the name "Lisa." While there, she took a phone call while Heather was tending P.J. and used it as an excuse to test Heather's reaction to the name Mrs. Hadley.

Against Dr. Steve Hardy's strong objections, Mark Dante had begun a final series of tests preparatory to his decision to go ahead with a highly dangerous operation on Lamont Corbin. Mark had told Lamont and his wife Katy that he would operate as soon as famous surgeon Dr. Copeland arrived to assist him, saying he then believed he had no right to deny Lamont his chance since they both understood the risks he would be taking.  Katie fantasized making love with Mark and felt guilty about it.

David Hamilton had decided to use the information he had obtained by virtue of his being at General Hospital for therapy and his insider's position in Drs. Rick and Lesley Webber's home, to offer a day-by-day, hour-by-hour report of Lamont's operation, which had been kept secret by a strict news blackout by Corbin Enterprises, to a Mr. Cates for the purpose of stock manipulation, even in the face of a warning by Cates that Hamilton would be playing in rough company and risking his life if the information should prove false. As Hamilton was on his way down from this meeting, he met Laura and Scotty, who had spent the night together in Lee's suite, in the hotel elevator. Lee was out of town with Dr. Gail Adamson on some personal legal business of Gail's,  Gail was having trouble collecting her husband’s inheritance because of her ex-mother-in-law. David told them that he would make it a point to see that he forgot the meeting if they would do the same, though they were convinced he was being kind and had no real reason to want to cover up his own presence there, as he had just been on a job interview.

Laura, who had told Lesley that she spent the night with a young nurse-in-training, Barbara Spencer who covered up for her, had lost her wallet. As Scotty searched in vain for it, a hotel maid found it in Lee's suite.

When Gail Adamson contacted Monica Webber, she learned that Monica had stayed the night with Alan Quartermaine at his hotel and that Alan had offered her the use of his hotel apartment and room service, and planned to make his base of operations in Port Charles. Gail expressed the hope that Monica was not building another fantasy around Alan but Monica insisted that she had changed.

Lesley got a call from the Charleston Hotel, informing her that her daughter's wallet was found in Mr. Baldwin's suite. Lesley told Rick what had happened and that she couldn't close her eyes any longer; that she had to have it out with Laura. Rick corrected her—they both had to confront Laura. Lesley was concerned that if she didn’t speak to Laura in private, she would lose the chance to be Laura's friend. Rick told her, "be her mother."

Laura told Lesley that she probably had dropped the wallet when Scotty picked her up at Barbara's that morning and she went with him to pick up something for Lee. Lesley told her that Barbara had volunteered, as part of the cover-up story, that she had seen Laura directly to the bus-stop that morning. Laura wailed, accusingly, that the last time they'd talked, they had agreed that their relationship would be one of trust but Lesley interjected "based on lies?" Scotty’s roomate, Darren Blythe, was showing interest in Laura while Barbara tried to learn more about Scotty’s future inheritance. Barbara teased and taunted Darren.

Dr. Peter Taylor , awaiting Jeff's return, had persuaded Heather to stay on overnight, babysitting, in order that Heather would have to cancel a dinner Lana had arranged with her. The following day, he warned Heather not to let anyone in and to call him if there was trouble. Heather learned from her mother, when Mrs. Grant unexpectedly dropped by, that Lana had been trying to reach her, even calling up Mrs. Grant's house early that morning and that the girl sounded "strange." Heather was preoccupied, worried that P.J. would awake from a nap before Mrs. Grant - the baby's real grandmother - left.

When Jeff arrived, Peter played the tapes he had of Lana, spliced together, for Jeff and Steve, and told them he believed that Lisa and Lana were twins who co-existed in the same body, an hysterical condition, and that what Jeff took to be the symptoms of Breechman's Disease, might be physical manifestations of a fugue state, after the loss of consciousness by one person and before the other emerged. Peter suggested that when Lisa appeared in Port Charles, she might have been fleeing from a murder Lana committed.

February 1978  (General Hospital) 

Dr. Jeff Webber arrived at Heather's apartment as Lana was holding Heather with a letter opener poised at her throat, trying to force her out through an open window. Jeff couldn’t reach Lana without risking Heather's life but he told her he knew all about her past and addressed the Lisa part of her character. As Lisa struggled to emerge, Lana passed out - the fugue state between periods of dominance of different personalities. - Heather saw the transformation as Lisa woke, terrified at what had nearly happened. Lisa was hospitalized at General and Peter made arrangements for long term therapy at Long Island Sanitarium with high hopes for Lisa's eventual recovery.

Lamont Corbin had come through the delicate surgery performed by Dr. Mark Dante, who noted in his diary that after Corbin regained consciousness and spoke to Katie, he put Corbin's chances for recovery at 98% positive. David Hamilton had been hanging around General Hospital all that day with a trumped-up story of wanting to see Mark about some pain he was experiencing and, noting the information in Mark's personal diary, prepared to pass it on to Cates.

The following day, Dr. Steve Hardy was beseiged by calls from members of the board of Corbin Limited, as rumors of Corbin's imminent death were published by newspapers and wire services. The stock syndicate David Hamilton was supplying information to was buying up stock in small batches, relying on Hamilton's information that Corbin's condition was stable, the opposite of the rumors they had planted. Laura Webber had seen Cates and believed he was David's new employer in an advertising firm. Later, as Cates paid off Hamilton and prepared to leave town, Lesley called at David's apartment and was told the same thing.

Lesley had learned from David that Monica was the doctor who prescribed birth control pills for Laura. She confronted Monica at Alan Quartermaine's apartment while Alan was out of the room and took her to task for interfering in the lives of the Webber family "out of jealousy." She warned Monica that if she didn’t stay completely out of Laura's life, she would go to Steve Hardy and report Monica's unprofessional conduct in prescribing the pills for a girl of Laura's age without a complete gynecological examination. In the light of Monica's past record this was an effective threat against Monica's ambitions concerning the expanded Cardiac section. When Lesley left, Alan asked who called and Monica told him the maid wanted to know if they wanted the beds turned down. Alan told her he had heard everything and believed she lied to him because Lesley's belief that she was not over Rick was correct. Monica accused Alan of playing games and trying to trap her and told him she intended to move out permanently.

Barbara « Bobbie » Spencer’s actions had made it clear that she was not interested in Darren, Scotty's roommate. She had learned that his personal ambitions did not include sharing in his father's lucrative business, When Darren realized this, he walked out on her. Barbara had helped Laura prepare for a date with Scotty by restyling her hair and make-up and lending her a dress. Scotty was taken aback at Laura's appearance and refused to take her out to a night club, so Laura went home saying only that she had quarreled with Scotty. The following morning she told Lesley she had decided that she should be seeing more of people her own age. She went to see Barbara after refusing to talk to Scotty that day and saw him in Bobbie's room, drinking wine with her. She turned and left. When she called Monica and asked to see her, Monica refused to talk with her. As a last resort she phoned David's apartment but Lesley was there to help David with some decorating ideas and he too dismissed her. Laura then phoned Barbara Vining.

Dr. Gail Adamson had met Maria Schuler who had flown in from Zurich with her attorney, claiming she worked with Gail's late husband Greg on a manuscript for his most successful book, "Always Spring," but never received credit or royalties. In Lee Baldwin's office, Gail acknowledged Greg's signature on some documents setting up a trust fund from which royalties were to be paid to the woman, but insisted on seeing proof which Miss Schuler claimed to have in the form of original notes, both hers and Greg's. Privately, Miss Schuler tried to convince Gail to accept the evidence she had presented so far, saying that she wished to spare Gail unwelcome revelations in the notes. Gail refused and both Lee and Miss Schuler's attorneys agreed to meet again the following day when the notes were available. Gail called Monica, who had made up her quarrel with Alan at his apartment in the same hotel in which Maria was staying, and told her what had happened. When Monica appeared at Miss Schuler's door some time later, she was told that she was expected and that she – Monica – was exactly as Greg described her.

Lamont Corbin had quickly gone from the solicitous husband who urged his wife Katie to get away for a time from the hospital atmosphere to insisting that nurse Jessie Brewer track Katie down and "bring her back here where she belongs." He sent for Steve Hardy and Mark to announce that he wished Steve to report in an upcoming meeting of the hospital board that he intended to donate $5,000,000 to General Hospital. Katie met with Mark and told him that the money wasn't a gift, that Lamont didn’t give away anything without a good reason. She said she was sure Lamont knew about them; he sensed what was going on. When Mark asked if she was frightened, she replied she was because she had seen Lamont in action. Mark answered that one thing wasn't going to change ... she was still Mrs. Corbin. He said he intended to make things as easy as he could to pick up his life after Katie and Corbin left. Katie told him she had no intention of leaving the hospital with Lamont. She said she did not intend to go on being Lamont's possession, even a prized one. She intended to divorce Corbin when he was well enough. Mark admitted he loved Katy but told her that Lamont's convalescence had a long way to go and warned her not to speak about their plans even to Gina.

Maria Schuler had made it clear to Monica that the notes she intended to produce to verify her claim would make it clear that Greg and Monica had an affair.

When Alan noticed Monica's nervousness and agitation she refused to tell him what was the matter, but said she needed $50,000 - the sum Maria Schuler had asked to turn the papers over to Monica and return to Zurich. Alan told Monica he would get the money but there would be a delay and offered his personal check. When it was clear that only cash was acceptable to Miss Schuler, Monica stole the envelope containing the notes while Maria was at dinner. Miss Schuler assured her attorney Herbert Berman that she was not so foolish as to keep only one copy of the notes and that she had a second set in safekeeping at the hotel and one in Zurich.

Monica was confident that the problem had been solved and offers to attend the meeting with Gail, giving Rick very little notice to replace her as his assistant in some scheduled surgery. When Maria Schuler coolly produced the notes and Lee read them, he asked Gail to step into another office for a moment and glared at Monica as he passed. He told Gail that it was his recommendation that she honor Miss Schuler's claim as she could readily see that the handwriting was Greg's and to do so without reading them. Gail couldn’t accept this and stepped back into the room where the papers were handed to her and she began to read. As Monica got up to leave, Miss Schuler stopped her.

Laura had left Port Charles with some of her clothing and without leaving a note for Lesley. Finally Lesley got a call from Barbara Vining to tell her that Laura had phoned her and then appeared at her door in Buffalo. She said that Laura did not want her to get in touch with Les and recommended that Lesley wait for further word. Barbara and her husband Jason had been divorced and their daughter Amy was living with Jason - the man Laura believed to be her father, just as she believed Barbara Vining, who raised her, to be her mother -. Barbara was living with a musician and there was very little money to spare. She told Laura that if she stayed, even for a time, she would have to help out. After Barbara went to the store to put together a meal, Laura phoned Lesley and asked her to drive up and take her home. David drove Lesley up to Buffalo and while he and Laura were getting some things Laura had left with Barbara before going to live with Lesley into David's car, Barbara told Lesley that she responded to her maternal feelings for Laura instinctively but she wanted Les to tell Laura that her call had opened old wounds. When Lesley relayed the message to Laura at a roadside restaurant, Laura said she wouldn't take advantage of Barbara again. Lesley told Laura that when she was going through her room looking for clues to where Laura might have gone, she found her cigarettes and warned her of the danger of smoking for someone on the pill. Laura reassured Lesley, telling her she no longer smoked and as they got up to join David, who was getting the car gassed up, Laura concealed the elongated purse designed to hold cigarettes in her bag with a scarf.

Bobbie Spencer had made good time with Scotty in Laura's absence and they had been sleeping together with Bobbie already suggesting to Scotty that Lee would probably help out with the finances if Scotty were to get a place of his own without Darren as a roommate. When Darren asked about Scotty's break with Laura, he learned that Laura had left town and Scotty told him that from the evening Laura arrived overdressed and made-up, he felt he didn't really know her.

Bobbie had told Lesley when Laura was first missing that Laura had been spending quite some time visiting with David Hamilton at his apartment. Lesley took the information only as an indication of how little she knew about Laura's friends, David among them. On the way up to Buffalo in David's new sportscar - the first fruits of his Lamont Corbin deal, Lesley remarked to David that she was grateful that Laura decided to come home and she felt she had to see to it that Laura never wanted to leave again ... no matter what it took.

Diana Taylor felt uncomfortable with Heather nursing  PJ as she noticed how attached she had become to her adopted son. Heather couldn’t conceal her pain when she was informed and stopped from continuing any contact with PJ.

Gina Dante finally told Gary Lansing she didn’t feel like marrying him. They reconciled on condition that he did not resort to ambitious career pranks.