GH’S ANNA GOES BLIND!
■ Chaos ensues when Anna is suddenly struck blind and falls unconscious. Peter rushes her to General Hospital, where doctors work to restore her sight and get to the bottom of her ailment.
“Because her collapse is so sudden, it’s clearly an emergency, and also a medical mystery,” begins Co-head Writer Shelly Altman. Both Finn and Griffin spring into action. “Anna has lost her sight, and Griffin is called in immediately because it seems that it might have a neurological component. The results of the tests are extremely surprising, and it affects Finn’s specialty” — infectious diseases — “more than they initially realized.”
Finn is obviously distressed to see the woman he loves in such a dire condition. “Finn is both a romantic partner and a doctor, and he does have to separate his emotion from his professionalism,” Altman notes. “But his very presence keeps Anna focused and calm during the crisis.”
Though Peter is also affected by what is going on with his mother, “He does rise to the occasion,” according to the scribe. “There is still so much baggage that they need to unpack, particularly Peter toward Anna. They have made overtures, certainly; during Christmas, they came a little bit closer. But he has very conflicted feelings in the wake of seeing his mother collapse and perhaps die. They have no idea what this thing is, so just as he is starting to get to know her, there is the fear that he may never get to do so.”
It isn’t lost on Anna that Griffin, Finn and Peter are all there to lend support. “In the midst of this crisis, she doesn’t have time to fully appreciate that, but these people gather around her and she certainly does feel the impact of what it means to suddenly have all these men in her life filling different roles,” says Altman.
Anna is whisked into emergency surgery. “They treat the blindness immediately,” Altman explains. “After, Anna quickly regains consciousness — but the cause of the blindness remains a big question mark.” In the face of this uncertainty, “Anna is stoic and strong. Losing her eyesight permanently would obviously be a very critical problem for her, as it would be for anybody. But she is Anna; she is indomitable. I think what we know about our Anna is that even if this proved to be a permanent condition, she would somehow find a way to gain power over the condition.”
Finn is by Anna’s side when her bandages are removed, and will be key to the efforts to figure out what caused her to go blind. Teases Altman, “What has happened to Anna will lead us to uncover a mystery that affects not only Anna, but several surprisingly unrelated people.”