What Happened To Nina On General Hospital?
Nina Reeves has come quite a long way since she first appeared on the "General Hospital" scene back in 2014. The first moment she appeared on-screen her eyes popped wide open and viewers later learned that was the first time it happened in 20 years. Nina had been in a coma for all that time and lost two decades of her life and so much more (via Soaps In Depth).
It's been a long and pretty twisty road for Nina since then, but if a person meets this Port Charles resident for the first time, one would never guess she missed part of the Bill Clinton presidency, all of the George W. Bush presidency, and most of the Barack Obama presidency, plus the invention of smart phones. She's definitely adapted to life outside a coma and has been played by two actresses, Michelle Stafford and Cynthia Watros (via Entertainment Tonight).
How Nina got into that coma and what's happened to her since she woke are the things soap operas are made of.
Nina Reeves awakes from a 20-year sleep
Nina's debut on "General Hospital" was a big deal in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Michelle Stafford, who played Phyllis Summers on "The Young and the Restless" almost continuously since 1995 left the soap and had been rumored to be joining "GH" and those rumors were confirmed Silas Clay's (Michael Easton) allegedly dead wife was seen on screen awakening from her decades-long slumber and fans finally learned what happened to her, as Nina Reeves Clay also learned (via Daytime Confidential).
Apparently, Nina's greedy mother, Madeline Reeves (Donna Mills), wanted to make sure Nina never produced any heirs to her fortune so that Madeline wouldn't be left high and dry, as dictated in her late husband's will. When she learned newlywed Nina was pregnant, she made sure she took too many antidepressants in a bid to induce a miscarriage. But the pills worked too well and sent Nina into that coma (via Soaps in Depth).
Nina is furious over the years she missed
After Nina Reeves regained her strength, she made her way to Port Charles to find her husband, but also didn't let him know she didn't really need a wheelchair. That way she would be able to enact revenge on Ava Jerome (Maura West), a woman Silas had an affair with when married to her who did end up giving him a child all those years ago, now-grown daughter Kiki Jerome. She even enlisted the help of her mother to kidnap a pregnant Ava and induce labor (via Soaps In Depth).
By the time Nina delivered Ava's baby girl, she was in a delusional state and convinced herself that the infant was the child she had been pregnant with when she entered her coma as a young woman fresh out of college. She then took off with the baby with the aid of her new friend, Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth), according to Soaps.com, and named her Jaime Somers after "The Bionic Woman," a TV show Nina enjoyed as a child.
Nina impulsively marries again
After Nina Reeves was forced to give Ava Jerome's baby back, she spent some time in a mental health facility, but then returned to Port Charles to try to live life in the 21st century. That's when she impulsively married Ric Lansing (Rick Hearst), who it turned out was only after her for her money and was conspiring with Madeline Reeves. It turned out Madeline was so desperate that she even murdered Silas Clay when he caught onto her scheme. When Nina learned what was going on, she annulled her new marriage and began a romance with her friend Franco (via Soaps In Depth).
Nina was happy to start life fresh and decided to return to the career she was starting when she married Silas, journalism. When Julian Jerome (William deVry) wanted Crimson Magazine to fail so he could get a tax write-off, he hired Nina thinking that would do the trick, but Nina turned out to be a fantastic magazine editor and made Crimson a success. However, she also wanted to have a baby with Franco and he did not want to have one with her, so they broke up. She was further crushed to learn she couldn't have children after her years in a coma (vis Soaps.com).
Nina finds yet another husband ... and a daughter
Just because Nina Reeves was told she couldn't be a mom didn't mean she couldn't be a stepmom, so when she had a one-night stand with Valentin Cassadine and learned he had a little girl, she was thrilled. Nina and Valentin also married and she was thrilled to become Charlotte's stepmom, but really hated Charlotte's third grade teacher, Willot Tait. It turned out her mother had a secret (via Soaps.com). When Valentin visited Madeline in prison, she confessed that Nina's baby never died and then promptly had a heart attack and died (via Soaps In Depth).
At that point, Nina and Valentin were on the outs and divorced, but Valentin took it upon himself to inform Nina of what her mother said, and Nina later found a half locket among her Madeline's things that convinced her that her daughter was out there somewhere with the other half of the locket, just like in the Broadway musical "Annie," another pop culture reference out of Nina's 1980s childhood (via Soaps In Depth).
Valentin decided he would make Nina love him again if he found Nina's child, but since he didn't have any luck, he just hired someone to pose as her daughter and faked a DNA test. Nina was thrilled to meet Sasha Gilmore and Sasha really did want Nina to be her mother by the time the truth came out (via Soaps In Depth).
Nina gets more daughters
Although Nina Reeves was heartbroken when she learned Sasha Gilmore was not her daughter, dumping Valentin Cassadine once again, she set out in earnest to find her real daughter. Imagine her shock when she learned Carly Corinthos had known for months that presumed-dead sociopath Nelle Benson (Chloe Lanier) was really Nina's daughter. Nina was crushed that she wouldn't get to know her daughter and angry at Carly for keeping the truth from her, so when she learned Carly's presumed dead husband, Sonny Corinthos, was really alive living in a small Pennsylvania town with amnesia, she didn't tell Carly, but briefly moved to that town and fell in love with him (via Soaps In Depth).
As of this writing, Sonny has his memory back and he and Nina are falling in love with honesty. She is also suing for grandparents' rights to Nelle's son, Wiley, who is being raised by his father, Sonny's son, Michael Corinthos, and that hated school teacher-turned-nurse, Willow Tait. However, Nina has yet to learn that two babies survived those pills and that coma and she really had twins — and that her other daughter is Willow (via Soaps.com).