You don't have to be afraid of what you are.
There's an answer if you reach into your soul
and the sorrow that you know will melt away
Logan Howlett took a long, calming drag of the cigarette perched between his index and middle finger. He had never been much of a cigarette smoker, but desperate times called for desperate measures when he currently didn’t have any cigars with him so he would just have to settle for the cheap stress reliever for the moment.
Personally he didn’t like the smell of cigarettes, but he also didn’t like the smell of the sterilized-smelling room he had been camping out in for basically the whole of five minutes. It was under bad circumstances, but weren’t most circumstances involving a hospital bad, unless it was a child being delivered or something of the sort?
Being reminded of yet again why Logan Howlett was even near a hospital in the first place, the stress of the whole situation was slowly creeping back through his veins and flooding throughout his whole being. Logan took yet another drag of the cigarette that was to be his last, and tossed it on the ground, not long after making contact with the ground with his foot to squash the worthless item.
“You really shouldn’t be smoking around a hospital, sir. It’s not very…how should I put it, smart?” An uncivil woman drawled as she shook her head in a dismissing way, walking straight past a very perturbed looking Logan Howlett. “Last time I checked, it was illegal.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am.” Logan scoffed, shoving his hands in his deep blue jean pockets. Sighing, Logan took refuge on a nearby wooden bench that lined the cement of the walkway to the automatic glass doors that led inside the lobby of the hospital.
Logan bent over, resting his elbows on his knees as he supported his chin in his fisted hands. Every so often, people walked in and out of the infirmary with looks of deep thought and concentration strewn across their faces like their loved one was in the worst, possible situation anyone could ever find themselves stuck in.
But in reality, being the father of a two week pregnant teenager was probably the worst situation he could ever find himself and his daughter stuck in. A fifteen year old innocent, naïve, and very foolish young woman-pregnant.
Logan ran his large hands through his unruly, black hair, messing it up even further than it probably already looked. How could this have happened? Logan was not an irresponsible father; he paid his bills, he kept his baby girl in school, he went to work five days of the week and worked eleven straight hours, he kept food on the table, he kept himself and the only woman in his life left that he actually cared about in a decent house in a decent neighborhood, and he even went to her high school football games so he could watch his favorite girl cheerlead the football team into a winning victory.
Where had he gone wrong? What could he have done to keep this from happening?
And for a father to find out the way he had, that his Jennifer Howlett was indeed pregnant, was maybe one of the most shocking ways he could possibly imagine without having another parent or friend come up to him and break the horrible news to him himself.
Jennifer had left the dinner table, or what could be called a dinner table, at an alarmingly fast jump off her chair and sprinted off to the nearest bathroom. Logan had thought nothing of it at first, but when her cell phone gave a loud vibration on the table, he had been automatically curious. What was the harm of looking at a text on his daughter’s cell phone?
All of the harm in the world.
“ur pregnant!?! jen u cant be! theres just no way..”
And at that exact moment, Logan Howlett’s world fell apart.
“Daddy.”
Logan glanced up from his reverie and there stood his girl, nudging his knee with her leg, who used to play with barbies instead of boys and used to drink fruit punch instead of vodka. To her, when she was eight years old, getting high meant swinging on the playground and using protection meant wearing a helmet. Back then, the worst things she could get from a guy were cooties and the only drug she knew of was cough medicine. The only things that hurt were skinned knees from falling off her bicycle one too many times and sex was something that only “married people” did.
But here Jennifer Marie Howlett, one of the prettiest and most beautiful girls he had ever laid eyes upon, had tears running down her angelic face and he knew right away that the nurse had only confirmed the worst of his and Jennifer’s fears.
Logan stood up and without a moment’s hesitation, he wrapped his strong and forgiving arms around his daughter and held her tight to him as heaves and heaves of sobs wracked the petite, young girl.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
