A bitter core

On my way to work, I observed this petite, strikingly attactive figure walking ahead of me at a fairly high speed. She really knew how to dress up, and make heads turn. I was walking a few 30 feet behind her, watching her and the stares from male passerby's. Some men actually stopped what they were doing and escorted her with their eyes from one end of their field of vision till she disappeared into the other.
Looking at her face, with the red Tikka on her forehead signifying that she is married, you'd say that the she must be busy thinking about her POA for another day at work.
If only all these assumptions about her were true.
She was not going to work, as the average guy would have thought. She was going to our clinic to take care of her ailing husband. He is an extremely skinny 6 footer, giving you new insight to the phrase 'skin and bones'. (And that was just an understatement). The first time I saw the couple together, I was so amazed as to how a guy, hideous as he was, could possibly manage to get such a young hottie for a wife.
To make things even more interesting, he doesn't seem grateful at all, instead, he uses her as a punching bag to vent out his frustration. Sick as he is (he cannot walk, as he cannot completely straighten his knees) he still finds the energy to beat her with whatever he can find, and verbally abuse her when she gets out of his reach. One particular night, he actually tried to hit her with a rock he had concealed under his pillow.
Both of them are HIV positive. They also have a strapping 1 year old boy, who needs to be taken care of. Taking care of a child and a childish (and extremely ill) husband could be quite a challenge.
Obviously, she would love to run away from such a nightmare. But how can she? In spite of her looks, she is HIV positive. The stars in a prospective new groom's eyes would dim into disgust the moment he hears about her HIV status. Besides, she knows that her beauty is short lived. She will in a few years fall sick, and may look just as ill and become just as grumpy as her husband, and then who will take care of her? No, not her family, because she ran away from her home to get married to this man, and the only place can get help when she becomes a widow is from her husband's family.
So, she will have to leave her child at home every day to tend and care for this beast of a man, to receive no gratitude, but only more and more hatred.
But every day, she dresses up in her best clothes and accessories, offering visual candy to all the men she passes by, and comes to the clinic to take care for one of the least attractive man she must have seen along the way.
Not because she loves him, but because she doesn't have a choice.
The second glance isn't as pleasing as the first