The members of the team were almost all former military — American, Slovak and Norwegian — gruff and full of bravado. I liked them. Pete initially responded to my first Facebook message with “Hey Alex,” followed by a week of radio silence. When we finally met, he and his colleague Derek asked me briefly about my medical background, and that was that. I figured I would stick around for a week or two and then head back to the States. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

For the next eight months, we trailed Iraqi forces as they pushed deeper into the city. We set up makeshift aid stations in homes, schools and sometimes just on the side of the road. The fighting was relentless. Every time a neighborhood was liberated, we would be inundated with wounded soldiers and civilians; our busiest day brought us more than a hundred casualties. Between working in hospitals back home in Minnesota and the years I spent photographing the conflict in Yemen, I had been exposed to plenty of trauma, but nothing prepared me for a still-conscious young man whose brain matter was scattered across the stretcher or a teenage girl with four broken limbs and crushed pelvis delivered on a door frame, covered in glass. Almost worse than the physical wounds were the screams of anguish for lost parents and children.

Amid all of this horror, Pete and I grew close. Intense experiences lead to intense emotions. In him I saw a great leader with a big heart, one who was even more affected than I by the gore we witnessed every day. We became more than each other’s colleague and confidant. We fell in love quickly and deeply. Our sense of shared mission evolved, too. To treat more patients and run a more organized operation, we founded a new nonprofit, Global Response Management.

In June 2017, coalition forces began an assault to retake Mosul’s historic Old City. By that point, our team had treated thousands of people. Each death left me deflated, but I was able to compartmentalize my grief and move on. The adrenaline kept me focused. Then, on June 19, the war suddenly became more personal. That afternoon, we received four casualties, all journalists. Samuel Forey, a French reporter I had got to know, appeared on our doorstep first with shrapnel lodged in his face. He and the other journalists were struck by a roadside bomb while reporting from the Old City, on foot. He told us that the others were still pinned down by the fighting. “They’re trapped,” he said. “It’s bad.”