Lisa's affair with Bruce Elliott is over, but so is her marriage to Bob Hughes. In fact, Bob has just been fixed up with Nurse Sylvia Hill by his friend and fellow resident, Dr. Chuck Ryan. Sylvia has an interesting story: she is suffering from lupus. Bob, inspired by the way Sylvia is dealing with the adversity, thinks of asking her to marry him, but Sylvia would later leave Oakdale to be with her family in Michigan.
Bob and Lisa are briefly brought back together by their son, Tom's, illness. Bob and Lisa hold a vigil over Tom until he recovers. However, Bob won't take Lisa back.
David, who is in mourning over the death of his wife Betty, buries himself in his work at Oakdale Memorial Hospital. To get himself through each workday, David starts taking Benzedrine pills. One day, David, under the influence of Benzedrine, falls asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Ellen reports this incident to Doug, who threatens to fire David unless he gets off the pills and puts himself together. Doug points out that his boys need him. Soon, David sends for Dan and Paul, who had been staying in New York with his former in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. Then he hires Franny Brennan as a nanny for the children.
Penny, now recovered from the injuries and amnesia she suffered in the car crash that killed Jeff Baker, goes for a walk in the park and meets a man named Neil Wade. Neil works in a seedy hotel, but his cultured speech reveals a high level of education.
As it turns out, Neil is a licensed physician who ran away from the profession because of two incidents that shell-shocked him. First, Neil's adoptive father became ill and he couldn't save his life. Not too long afterward, Neil got a job at the clinic of Dr. Jerry Stevens. One of Neil's patients died one day, and he felt deeply guilty about that to the point where he didn't feel he should practice medicine anymore.
Neil is quite reluctant to reveal his past as a physician to Penny. The truth would come out, however, at a Hughes family gathering. There Grandpa chokes on a piece of meat and Neil expertly performs an emergency tracheotomy to save his life.