HAMILTON, Ohio — Steroids. Muscle relaxers. Stomach pills.
The bottles rattle when Wayne Rhodes picks up a box off his coffee table. He pulls one out, then another.
“It’s endless,” he says. “I don’t know exactly what everything is for. I just take what I’m supposed to take.”
Last year, doctors told Rhodes he might only have six months to live. His liver was failing, but he couldn’t get on their transplant list.
“I had to have a care team,” he says. “I didn’t have nobody. I didn’t have no family that could do it.”
He and his wife live paycheck to paycheck, and they couldn’t afford for her to take that much time off.
“It was depressing,” Rhodes said. “It was scary. I thought about dying every day.”
That’s when a small church down the street stepped up in a big way. When it looked like Rhodes might die, Pastor Aaron Simpson rallied congregation members of the Freedom House church.
“Every single person I asked jumped at the opportunity,” he says.
They drove him to appointments, sat with him in recovery and fed his dogs so he didn’t have to. Rhodes got his new liver, only a few days after Simpson drove to meet with his doctors.
But his recovery could take a year — or even more. He still can't feel his stomach.
“I’m not even supposed to pick up half a gallon of milk,” he says.
On Friday, Rhodes walks to the church to ask for help. Because his wife lost her job month. And he's not sure where they'll get the money for next month's rent.
“We’re just trying to figure everything out,” said Miranda Rhodes.
She has criminal charges in her past, which has made it difficult to find work. On Friday, she applies to drive for DoorDash.
Inside the church, Simpson gives Rhodes and her husband a hug.
“I think everybody in this room has been arrested — several times,” he says.
That’s part of the reason the pastor opened the church in this Hamilton neighborhood.
“I sold drugs. I used drugs. I was involved in all kinds of crime,” Simpson said. “But this is my home.”
The pastor met Rhodes three years ago after a crash outside the church. Rhodes told him about his own struggles.
“I’ve struggled with addiction my whole life,” Rhodes says. “I finally conquered it. And there’s no looking back.”
On Friday, Simpson talks to the couple about getting their records expunged. He says there might be programs the church could help pay for.
“We, as a church, are going to walk alongside him in any way we can,” Simpson says.
When Rhodes leaves, he doesn’t have everything figured out. He still isn't sure about rent. But he knows he has somewhere he can turn. And more than somewhere, he has someone.
“I thank God every day for that,” he says.
Watch Live:
