When Heather revealed to Jeff she was pregnant, Jeff told her to abort the baby so he could still be with Monica. Out of guilt, Monica reconciled with him. In 1977, Jeff had a slow recovery from his bullet wound. On his deathbed, he was told by his sister Terri Webber while her own mother Helene was dying, she had revealed the location of a safe deposit box, containing a letter stating Jeff's real father was Steve Hardy. Jeff then stole a gun kept in the back of the bar, and was found unconscious with a bullet in his brain. Suddenly, Jeff disappeared and no one knew where he was for a time, until he showed up at a Port Charles bar called Barney's Place where he was drunk and high on amphetamines. She became pregnant but didn't tell anyone, not even Jeff.
In response, he had an affair with Heather Grant, a scheming nanny who wanted Jeff to herself. Jeff grew angry and jealous as their feelings developed into an affair. Suddenly, Rick appeared alive, revealing he had been captured by African revolutionaries during a civil war and held prisoner for ten months. He missed his brother greatly, as did his wife Monica, who had once been engaged to Rick. Jeff feared everyone at GH was comparing him to his dead brother, Rick. Steve assumed they were ideally happy, but in actuality, their marriage was a wreck. He believed Jeff and Monica were a perfect choice. Steve Hardy tapped the young married Webbers for a bold new experimental program at the hospital called Mr. Monica Bard Webber (then Patsy Rahn) planned to join the staff of General Hospital following in the footsteps of Jeff's older brother, Rick Webber, who had reportedly been killed in a plane crash over Africa. Jeff Webber was first introduced in the spring of 1976 when he arrived in Port Charles after graduating from medical school.