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.
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General Hospital, Jan 78
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