ten o'clock
Another nurse , much younger , without the `` black band , '' watched the surgeon from the foot of the cot . Beads of perspiration chased themselves down her pale face , caused less by sympathy than by sheer weariness and heat . The small receiving room of St. Isidore 's was close and stuffy , surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether . The Chicago spring , so long delayed , had blazed with a sudden fury the last week in March , and now at ten o'clock not a capful of air strayed into the room , even through the open windows that faced the lake . The patient groaned when the surgeon 's fingers first touched him , then relapsed into the spluttering , labored respiration of a man in liquor or in heavy pain . A stolid young man who carried the case of instruments freshly steaming from their antiseptic bath made an observation which the surgeon apparently did not hear . He was thinking , now , his thin face set in a frown , the upper teeth biting hard over the under lip and drawing up the pointed beard .