In 2005, Livingston won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her portrayal of Emily.

[2] Dr. Monica Quartermaine meets Emily's mother Paige Bowen while the two women are undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

Emily finds herself the subject of a blackmail attempt, when she receives a photograph of her head photoshopped onto the body of a nude model.

She begins to push Juan away, and her friends learn Gia was actually attempting to blackmail Emily over her drug usage at the rave, not Ted's murder.

Emily and Zander are tracked to the Canada–US border by her brother Jason Morgan, a mafia enforcer who works for Sorel's rival Sonny Corinthos.

Emily returns to Port Charles and the Quartermaines, and is stunned when Zander arrives at her window asking her to run away with him.

With the condition he testifies against Sorel, Sonny agrees to pay his bail and hires Nikolas' aunt, Alexis Davis, to represent Zander.

When Zander is freed, he and Emily, Sonny, and Alexis find themselves the target of a gunman outside the Port Charles Police Department.

In spring 2003, Emily, recovered from her injuries, returns to Port Charles, hiding she has developed breast cancer.

At the same time, Nikolas' uncle, Stefan Cassadine, begins pressuring him into marrying Lydia Karenin, a wealthy heiress who can save his family from losing their fortune.

Stefan relents and offers to throw an engagement party for them as a token of good will, although he is secretly plotting to have Emily killed that evening.

On the night of their engagement party, a hitman hired by Stefan accidentally throws Summer Holloway, Lucky's girlfriend, over a cliff to her death in an attempt to murder Emily.

They confess their love for one another and kiss, but Emily refuses to treat Zander so badly and tells Nikolas they can't be together.

She goes on a second chemo treatment and seems to be doing well, but the tests show she isn't faring well and her immune system is waning to the point that she has to be hospitalized.

As Emily recovers and starts married life with Zander, she fights her attraction to Nikolas, attempting to make her marriage work.

On Halloween night, Emily confesses her love to Nikolas and they begin kissing only to be interrupted by Zander who lets her have it for all the lies she's told him and the heartache she's put him through.

They meet Sam McCall, a shipwreck salvager who tells the couple about a treasure on the sunken ship The Courage, belonging to the Cassadines.

Mob boss Lorenzo Alcazar is the highest bidder, but the treasure is stolen shortly before a fire breaks out at the hotel.

When Nikolas gives his seat to Emily on the last helicopter evacuating guests, he is presumed dead when an explosion appears to kill him and Jason.

While driving, Nikolas, who had just purchased wedding rings, learns of the hostage situation and has a car accident, leading everyone to believe he is dead.

When a still amnesiac Nikolas learns his friends and family knew he was and didn't tell him, he rejects them in favor for a life with Mary.

While Emily decides to become a doctor like her parents, Nikolas recovers his memory, leading to a distraught Mary going insane.

Nikolas, Lucky, Elizabeth, and Emily debate about turning Connor in for being AWOL, but agree to help him escape from Canada.

Believing Helena is alive, Emily convinces Connor to pretend he is Nikolas, as she instructs him on the finer arts of being a prince.

Jerry Jacks, going by the name of Mr. Craig, holds the two and several of their friends hostage with a bomb in order to get a package in the hotel's security vault.

When Elizabeth goes into premature labor and her father Alan has a heart attack, Emily is forced to choose which one would be released.

Elizabeth, Robin, and Patrick Drake help Emily develop an antidote that saves Nikolas' life.

In 2009, Nikolas is stunned when Emily's unknown twin sister Rebecca Shaw moves to Port Charles.

On the show's 50th Anniversary in 2013, Emily returns as a ghost along with Alan and Rick Webber to help Monica and Tracy quit their feuding.

She returns as a ghost a year later to help her brother, A.J., cross over after he was murdered, then again to warn Nikolas to be careful of his fiancée, Britt Westbourne.