Adelaide's eyes flicker to Sarge's face and she realizes all over again, as she used to when she was younger and there was so much that he just got, that he sees a lot more than people realize. It's always been a comfort in the past, immeasurably, but just now she can only hope that this time he doesn't see too much. The tightrope is too precarious. "Yeah," she says, putting a little 'and what of it?' into the lift of her brows. "That's all. He's a friend."
Then she turns to her brother, with his sudden nasty attitude and his long-ago named Misery Hunch hitting his shoulders. He's never made her feel like she was asking too much in her life - she could have asked for a parade of golden unicorns and a river of hot chocolate and he would have gone about getting it with gusto - and now she knows that something is very wrong. She casts about in her mind for the name of a med that she remembers from her studying of first aid, though all the while she is distracted by frowning at him. "It's Amiodarone," she says. "For dysrhythmia."
And then she strides back across the small space, and she goes toe-to-toe with her giant of a brother, and she does pretty much what Sarge is already thinking about doing. She reaches up, interrupting the business with his phone, and puts a hand on either side of his face and draws him in, so that he has no choice but to look straight into her thunderous gray eyes unless he shuts his own. "What in the hell have you gotten into your head right now, James Hawkins?" she demands. She's an adult now, where she was just edging out of childhood the last time they saw her, but that stern and knowing look in her eyes is just exactly the same. "I shoulda remembered you've always been a dope with a metaphor, just what is it that you think I said to you? Because I guarantee you got it all wrong if that's the attitude you're giving me."