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My 5 year old son is dead because my husband had two beers at his friend's barbecue. Every father who has ever driven home after a beer has done what he did. I am writing this at 4 AM. I have not slept through a single night in two months. Please read this. It might save your husband or your child. My name is Dr. Catherine Reeves. I am 41 years old. I have been an emergency room physician for 14 years at the regional hospital in our county. I have signed death certificates for 23 children killed in DUI crashes during my career. Two months ago I failed to save my own son. My son Ethan was 5 years old. He had just started kindergarten in August. He loved trains. He had a small wooden engine named Henry that he had carried in his pocket since he was 3. He had told me three weeks before he died that when he grew up he wanted to be a fireman so he could save people the way Mommy does. The last thing he said to me was "love you Mommy." He said it at 1:14 PM on a Saturday in March. He was in his car seat. His father David was buckling him in. They were going to David's brother Mike's house to watch the college football game. I was on my way to a 12 hour shift at the hospital. I kissed Ethan through the window of the car. He smiled at me and pressed his train Henry against the glass. I have been replaying that smile every night for two months. David is my husband. He is 50 years old. He is a senior civil engineer. We have been married for 11 years. He is a kind man. He has never had a DUI in his life. He is the kind of father who reads bedtime stories with different voices for each character. He coached Ethan's t-ball team for the one season Ethan got to play. David drinks beer occasionally. A beer at a Saturday afternoon barbecue. A beer watching the game with his brother. He has done this for the entire 11 years of our marriage. He has driven home from Mike's house a thousand times. He has felt fine every single time. He felt fine that Saturday too. Mike's house is 22 minutes from ours. David got there at 2 PM. Mike's wife had put out chips and hot wings. Mike had a 12 pack of beer in the cooler on the back deck. The game started at 3:30 PM. David had his first beer at 3:45 PM. He had his second beer at the end of the second quarter, around 4:40 PM. He had not had a sip of beer in 73 minutes when he buckled Ethan back into the booster seat at 5:33 PM. He felt completely fine. Ethan was asleep in the back seat by the time David pulled out of Mike's driveway. Ethan had been playing in Mike's yard with Mike's golden retriever for two hours. He was tired. He fell asleep against the side of his booster seat with Henry the train still in his hand. David drove the route he had driven a thousand times before. He did not feel impaired. He felt completely fine. He had a sleeping 5 year old in the back seat and he felt sober. He thought he was the one driving him home. He was not. There is a thing about a blood alcohol of .08 that fathers do not know. I am going to tell you what it is because I am a doctor and most doctors do not tell you this. You cannot see it. A 50 year old man at .08 walks like a sober man. Speaks like a sober man. His eyes are clear. He can hold a conversation about the score of the game. He can carry a sleeping child to a car. He can buckle a booster seat without missing a strap. He looks fine because at .08 he IS fine in every way you can observe. He just cannot drive. The visible signs of drunkenness, the slurred words and unsteady walk, do not appear in most adults until .14 or higher. By the time anyone can see a driver is impaired, they are at almost twice the legal limit. Almost no one who dies on the road is at .14. The deaths happen between .08 and .12. The legal limit is .08. David was at .09. He was over the limit by .01. He felt completely fine. He killed our son. I want to stop and talk to every father reading this before I tell you the rest of the story. I am not telling you not to drink. Having a beer with your brother on a Saturday afternoon is normal. Watching the game with hot wings and a cooler on the back deck is normal. Most fathers in this country have done exactly what David did this month. That is the problem. You have done what David did. The only difference between you and David is the road. David drifted on Route 12. You did not drift on the road you drove home last Saturday. You got home. You felt fine. You were probably also over the legal limit. You had no way to know. I am asking you to do one thing. Check yourself before you drive. Get a SoberSense Pro breathalyzer. It costs $85. It uses the same fuel cell sensor police carry in their cruisers. It will tell you a real BAC number in 5 seconds. It can save your life. Blow into it before you drive. Like I said, having a beer is normal. Just test if you are under the legal limit of 0.08. Get one for your truck. Get one for your wife to keep in her purse. Get one for your brother to keep at his house. Here is where I got mine, please stay safe before you drive: https://trysobersense.com/products/sobersense-pro-breathalyzer If you are over the legal limit, call your wife. Call a cab. Sit on your brother's couch for an hour. Do anything except drive. I am a doctor. I would not be writing this if the device did not work. I have tested it against the police breathalyzers in my own trauma bay. They read within .003 of each other every time. I am asking you to be the father who uses it. So I do not have to write another letter like this one in two months. Now let me tell you what happened to my son. David's car left the road at 5:47 PM on Route 12. There was no other vehicle. No animal in the road. No mechanical failure. He drifted across the center line, overcorrected, and hit a tree on the passenger side of the car. The passenger side is where Ethan's booster seat was. I was in trauma bay three at the hospital when my pager went off at 5:51 PM. The text said: 5 year old male incoming, MVA, ETA 3 minutes, CPR in progress. I had read that text 400 times in 14 years. I did not know it was Ethan. I ran to the ambulance bay. The doors opened at 5:54 PM. The paramedics rolled the stretcher in. I saw his shoes first. They were small navy blue sneakers with a red stripe. I had bought them at Target three weeks earlier. Ethan had picked them out himself. He had been wearing them when he pressed Henry the train against the window of the car at 1:14 PM. I knew before I could see his face. I screamed. I want to tell you what happened in the next 14 minutes because nobody is going to tell you. Nobody else in this country has been the doctor who tried to save her own son. I ran the code anyway. I should not have. The protocol says you do not treat your own family. I was the attending physician on duty. The trauma team looked at me. I said "I am running this code." Nobody argued with me. I did chest compressions on my own 5 year old son for 11 minutes. I knew at minute 4 that he was gone. I am a doctor. I have done this 400 times. I knew his pupils. I knew the rhythm. I knew what the monitor was telling me. I kept doing compressions. Dr. Patel pulled me off at minute 14. He is my closest colleague. He has worked beside me for 9 years. He put his hand on my shoulder. He said "Catherine." That was all he said. I let him take over. He worked another 7 minutes. He pronounced Ethan at 6:18 PM. I was in the corner of trauma bay three when he made the call. The nurses had moved me there. I do not remember walking. I want to tell you something nobody told me before I became this person. You do not stop being a doctor when your own child dies. You become two people. One of them is screaming. The other one is taking notes. The doctor part of me watched Patel make the time of death call and registered the time. 6:18 PM. The doctor part of me knew Ethan had been brain dead for 14 minutes before Patel made it official. The mother part of me was on the floor next to the gurney. The two parts of me have not spoken to each other since. David was at the scene of the crash. He was conscious. He had a broken arm and a head laceration. The paramedics had put him in a separate ambulance. He blew 0.09 into the trooper's breathalyzer at 6:11 PM on the side of Route 12. The trooper put him in handcuffs at 6:14 PM. He was brought to my hospital at 11:07 PM for treatment. I did not see him. I did not speak to him. I did not look at him for two weeks. He is in jail now. He will be in jail for the next 6 years. I have not visited him. I do not know if I ever will. A nurse named Rebecca came to the family room at 9 PM. Rebecca and I have worked together for 9 years. She is the nurse who covers my shifts when I am on vacation. She has had dinner at my house. She knew Ethan. She sat next to me on the family room couch. She did not say anything for 20 minutes. Then she opened her purse. She pulled out a small black device. She set it on my lap. It was the SoberSense Pro breathalyzer I had told you about earlier. She said: "I have been carrying this in my purse for two years. My husband uses one before he drives home from anything. If David had used one tonight Ethan would still be alive." I looked at the device. I have been an emergency room physician for 14 years. I have signed death certificates for 23 children killed in DUI crashes. I have stood in the family room with hundreds of mothers and fathers and told them their child did not survive. I had never once thought to put one in my own husband's car. I bought eight of them at 5:47 AM the next morning at my kitchen table. One for me. I gave 6 to my close friends because I care about them so much. One I put in my kitchen drawer for David. He will not be home to use it for 6 years. The device that would have saved my son arrived at my house the next week after Ethan was already in the ground. Ethan's funeral was nine days after he died. His kindergarten class came. 22 five year olds. The teacher, Mrs. Hendrickson, had told them what happened. Each child had drawn Ethan a picture. The pictures are in a box in his room. His best friend Caleb gave me a small wooden train at the funeral. It was Caleb's. He had given it to Ethan to keep. He said: "Ethan can have Charlie. So Henry has a friend." Caleb is 5 years old. He gave my dead son his train. I have not been able to open the box of pictures yet. If you are a father or a mother of a young child reading this, your child is not the one I am worried about. I am worried about you. If you are the one who drinks two beers at your brother's house watching the game. If you are the one who has a couple of beers at a barbecue and drives home. If you are the one who feels completely fine. You are David. You can do for yourself this week what David could not do for himself. Get a SoberSense Pro breathalyzer. Put it in your truck. Blow into it before you turn the key every time you have had a drink anywhere. Check your real number. The device alone does not work. The act of using it does. I am asking you to be the father who uses it. Ethan is dead because his father did not have one in the cup holder. Your child is alive. Please keep him as safe as possible. Here is where I got mine for whoever needs it: https://trysobersense.com/products/sobersense-pro-breathalyzer It costs $85. It uses the same fuel cell sensor police carry in their cruisers. I am a doctor. I would not tell you to buy something that does not work. It will tell you a number that your feeling cannot. If you have ever driven home from your brother's house after a couple of beers, please share your story below. The fathers who do not become David are the fathers who started checking the number. The more of us who talk about this, the fewer of us who become me. 🙏