Clawing my way up

I’ve discovered that if I wait until my writing is done for the day to post a passage here, it gets too late and all I want to do is go to bed! So I’m going to do my best to try posting a passage from the day’s work in the afternoon.  So here’s one from today:

Tom was momentarily irritated by that psychiatry trick of answering a question with a question and turning the focus back on him to answer what he himself had just asked. But he could accept that in this case it was actually a good idea, actually warranted. So what did he think his life could be?