The Orin–Hal phone call — "Though the verdict rendered was no…"
Though the verdict rendered was no worse than a rather unperspicuous “Normal to Upper-normal” (sic), the penultimate modifier has caused, as you might anticipate, much pacing and high-decibel whingeing, as well as vows of eternal xerophagy from here on out.
Context
Still Avril's letter, reporting C.T.'s cholesterol test: she sics a medical lab's usage inside a chatty note to her own child, and objects to the verdict via "the penultimate modifier" — grammatical coordinates for an emotional event. The prescriptivist reflex is load-bearing even in the family's most intimate register. (And "whingeing" is one of her own imports — see n.111, below.)