It was past midnight.
She was restless. Wandering the hallway.
"Ma, come back to bed," I whispered.
She looked at me with sudden panic.
"I need to go home," she said.
"You are home."
"No," she insisted, tears forming. "My mother will worry."
Her mother had been gone for twenty-five years.
I held her hands.
"Your mother loves you," I said gently.
She looked at me like a child lost in a crowd.
"Does she?" she asked.
"Yes."
She studied my face.
"Do you love me?" she asked suddenly.
The question hit me harder than anything.
"With everything I am," I said.
She tried to say it back.
Her lips moved.
"I… I… I…"
Nothing came.
Her own words had abandoned her.
Frustration filled her eyes. She hit her chest lightly, like she could knock the word loose.
"I know it," she whispered helplessly. "I just can't say it."
So I said it for both of us.
"I love you."
And she cried.
Not because she forgot the word.
But because she felt it trapped inside her, unreachable.
That night, I lay beside her and realized something terrifying:
The disease was not just stealing memories.
It was stealing language.
And soon, maybe…
It would steal everything.