Dead iPod - but it flickers when connected to a laptop.

I'm going away on a school trip for a week starting tomorrow and I decided that I wanted to fix my ipod so that it works in both ears.

It opened really easily since the packaging has alway's been quite loose and I removed the battery and headphone jack and then put them back into place (I'm pretty sure the reason one ear hadn't been working is because the jack had lost it's screw and was slightly loose).

Then I put back all of the components, but one of the flat orange wires had come loose on one end - so that it was still attached to the battery but not to the main part of the ipod. I tried just pushing the small end with part of the wire into the white box part where it looked like it was supposed to go, but when I put the pieces back together it wouldn't turn on. However, when I connected it to my laptop, the apple logo flickered occasionally.

I think it might be a bad connection so please tell me how to repair it - tomorrow I have a fourteen hour flight to sit through!

And no, it wasn't the headphones.