Old Wounds

They'd been out of Rome for two days when Dinky developed a fever.

Grandpa's fingers thrummed against his knee as he tried not to look once again at the couch where Dinky still slept in a haze. Henry's camera box certainly wasn't the quietest place to sleep, what with the three younger Littles laughing and carrying on at the screen, and the sounds of Florence's traffic blaring around them as Henry traversed the streets with his parents. The box bumping against the boy's side didn't make the trip any easier. Grandpa winced as the box shook again.

"Might as well be on a boat," he grumbled, grabbing his chair for a handhold. It wasn't Henry's fault- Grandpa knew that- and up until today the bumping hadn't bothered him a bit.

Neither had Dinky's listlessness.

"I'm just thinking," Dinky had said the day after they'd left the coliseum, when he had to be called several times.

"About Cara!" Lucy teased, and they all had a good laugh while Dinky spluttered. Well, of course, he was mopping about that girl, Grandpa reassured himself. What else could it be?

"I'm just tired," Dinky had murmured the next day, surprising them all by turning down an offer to explore Florence. Then he'd rejected the food they brought back with them and promptly emptied what was left in his stomach into the closest waste basket.

"Poor Dinky," Lucy had exclaimed, while the boys watched in surprise.

"Well, travel doesn't agree with my stomach either," Grandpa reassured them, somehow ignoring that nagging feeling that crept up in his gut. Dinky managed a drink of water and some crackers later; that satisfied Grandpa's concerns.

Now it was day three, and Dinky had barely stirred from the couch. The children had tried shaking him awake earlier to see the sights until Grandpa told them to leave him be. Now he was about to start shaking the boy himself.

He glanced at the watch that worked as their clock. It had been an hour since Lucy had insisted on taking Dinky's temperature. No amount of protests or reasoning from any of them could change her mind.

"Oh, just let the little nurse have her way!" Ashley finally snickered, and Tom joined him.

The 101 degree reading from the thermometer had stopped Grandpa's laughter in its tracks.

"Hold on, now, sweetheart. You must have read that wrong." He had taken her place by Dinky's side and reset the thermometer to try again.

Yes, she had gotten it wrong.

Dinky's fever was 102 degrees.

Since then, Grandpa had been clock watching and trying to ignore that nasty wrenching in his guts. He'd given Dinky some medication for the fever and the headache he whined about, but Grandpa couldn't help feeling that there was something he was missing. His fingers inched towards the medical kit he'd set right by his chair, but each time he drew them back, mulling over the symptoms and trying to remember.

"Look, Grandpa! Look!" Lucy's pigtails bobbed up and down in excitement as she hopped on her feet. Grandpa craned his neck in her direction, but concern kept him from seeing any of the sights.

"Yes, Lucy, it's very exotic." He blinked when the children burst into spasms of laughter.

"Grandpa, it's a park!" Lucy corrected him.

"Oh? Well, I'm sure it's very nice, then." He folded his arms and shifted in his chair again, then seized the kit. Memory be damned, he decided, seizing thermometer again.

Dinky's eyes opened when Grandpa bent over him and put a hand to his shoulder, though he only moaned for answer when Grandpa whispered his name and placed the thermometer in his mouth. Grandpa ended up having to hold the instrument in place himself as Dinky seemed unable to fully rouse from sleep. He braced himself against the couch, examining the flushed face while he waited. Something seemed all too familiar about this, a déjà vu that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He kept seeing the locker room from his football days, but what in tarnation that had to do with Dinky he couldn't piece together.

All he knew for sure, as he stared numbly at the thermometer, was that Dinky's fever was spiking.

"Great Littles, save us," he sighed to the sick pilot. "Trust you to catch some foreign disease while we're stuck out here."

Dinky's ragged breaths were his only answer. Grandpa rubbed his eyes with his hand, willing himself to think calmly. They were still a week away from a flight home. He knew there had been some reason for the delay, but it escaped him now, confab it.

Alright, Little, that's enough! Think! He told himself sharply. He watched as his hand, moving of its own accord, rubbed Dinky's arm. Home was not an option. They needed to do something else; return to the hotel, perhaps. The Little emergency box he and Frank had outfitted before they'd left the US came into his mind's eyes, tucked away in his suitcase. It had all the possible contacts the Littles council could think of to find friends in the known world. Once the coast was clear, he'd have to show Tom and Ashley how to use them to contact any Littles in the area.

Because they needed help. Fast.

"Grandpa?" He turned his head at Tom's call. "Is Dinky still sick?"

"Yes, Tom," he answered, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt. He busied himself tugging off Dinky's jacket. The pilot's ridiculous cap and googles had been packed away safely in a suitcase sometime the day before, but he'd stubbornly clung to his jacket, whining that he was cold.

He didn't whimper this time, though Grandpa caught him wince as he tried to lift him to pull the jacket away.

"Dinky?" he asked, leaning closer. "What is it, boy?"

Dinky's eyes squeezed tightly.

"Sit up for moment. Let me get the jacket off." Grandpa tried to demonstrate by putting his hand under Dinky's shoulder to help him into a sitting position. The cry Dinky let loose startled everyone in the camera box.

"What's wrong? What happened to Dinky?" The children crowded around.

Grandpa ignored their questions. That memory flared again, the images finally sharpened by Dinky's cry. Another boy-that fallback on his old football team-feverish in the locker room…screaming when coach tried to turn his head…

With one hand still on Dinky's shoulder, Grandpa put his other on Dinky's neck, just as he remembered cough doing. In a voice so low and soft it couldn't possibly be his, he directed the pilot to nod his head, look to his left and then to his right, touch his chin to his chest…

"I can't…it hurts…" Tears were streaking from the corners of Dinky's eyes as he tried-oh, help him, Grandpa could see him trying-and failed to follow the instructions.

"Just like Alex," Grandpa whispered, drawing back and letting the sick pilot lie still again. "Just like Alex…"

"Grandpa?" Lucy pressed close to his side, tugging at his sleeve. "Who's Alex?"

"And why can't Dinky move his head?" Tom asked.

"Get back, kids." Grandpa rubbed his own bare head, trying to swallow his panic. No foreign disease after all.

"Lucy, get Henry's attention. Tell him we need to get back to the hotel, immediately. Tom, Ashley," he turned to both boys as Lucy ran back to the screen. "I need you to get something out of the cabinet for me."

Within a few minutes of Henry persuading his parents that he was tired and wanted to go back to the hotel, Tom and Ashley had found the emergency box and brought it to Grandpa.

"Now, listen closely, boys," he said opening the lid. "I'm going to tell you what you need to do…"

The minute Henry set his camera box down in the room and closed the door, the boys were off following Grandpa's instructions. With any luck-and Grandpa fervently hoped they had some-they would back with Littles from the area to help them. To Lucy and Henry's questions he would only shake his head and claim ignorance. Yes, Dinky was sick. No, it wasn't just a virus he'd picked up from traveling. Yes, Grandpa had a friend named Alex who had sick just like Dinky. No, he couldn't remember what it was or why neither could move their heads.

"And that's all I can tell you," he insisted, gruffly putting an end to their questions. The truth was he could remember far more than that, and he wasn't about to share the words, "spinal inflammation" with any of the children.

Thank the great Littles luck was on their side. After an hour of waiting, Tom and Ashley returned with several Littles.

"It worked!" Lucy clapped her hands. Grandpa knew how she felt. Ever since their experience in New York, uncovering Little immigrants in the Statue of Liberty, he and the council had worked incessantly to find somehow to network every Little in the world. Much of the reason for going with Henry and his parents was the chance to spread the word; let every Little know who existed and where.

It was proving effective, he realized, tears in his eyes, as their new acquaintances responded quickly to Dinky's condition. Their accents were thick with the local dialect, and Grandpa struggled to answer their questions, but all became alarmingly clear when one of the newcomers lifted Dinky's shirt to reveal purple bruises along his chest.

"Great littles, help us…"

All greetings (and explanations of Henry) were shoved aside as they worked quickly-there was a hospital down the road, near the airport, with a Little clinic just inside. If they only had some way to get Dinky there…

"I can take you!" Henry exclaimed.

They were at the clinic before Grandpa could blink. Within minutes Littles were swarming the camera box, Italian flying every which way as they moved Dinky to a stretcher. Yet even in the midst of the excitement, Grandpa heard Dinky's weak call.

"What, Dinky?" he asked, bending near him.

Those blue eyes, feverish and dazed, were oddly thoughtful. "Why…why didn't Mum ever come back?"

Blood pounded Grandpa's ears as he blinked dumbly. "Why I…I…"

The pilot's eyes drooped closed again without waiting for his answer. The stretcher sped off, medical staff hiding Dinky from view. The questions from the people around him, including his own grandchildren, flooded around him.

But now, a new voice had joined; Joined, and risen to a keening pitch that claimed Grandpa's immediate attention. From the far back depths of his memory, so suddenly yanked from its recesses, came a frowning girl, with eyes fierce and troubled.

"You're not the boss of me!"

"Maeva?" he gasped, as the stretcher disappeared into the clinic.

"No! Leave me alone! I don't care if I ever, ever see you again!"