Step-brother is not happy I didn't go to his daughter's birthday dinner

Not looking for advice, just ranting.My step-brother's daughter had her 7th birthday last week and my step-brother is angry I didn't go to their place for dinner on the night. He called me this morning to berate me for it. COVID has pretty much run its course where we live but this dinner was on a weeknight, I work full time, and I have issues with my knee which is currently playing up, hurting like hell and gets aggravated by driving. I also would have had to drive at night while on opiates for my knee which make me drowzy and he lives in a semi-rural area with winding, badly lit roads I don't know very well and no guard rails up a bloody mountain so it would have been super dangerous for me to drive.I told him all this when I let him know a few days before the dinner that I wouldn't be able to make it and reiterated it all during our call but it wasn't good enough. He said I should suck it up for my niece because she and her sister need their aunt in their lives. I was like "Your wife's sisters were there, aren't they their aunts as well?"I just don't get why he thinks I need to do this. I know it wasn't for gifts because he and his wife asked for people to not get any (they'd already gotten her a few small things and don't want their kids to be too materialistic). She isn't my kid, it isn't a milestone birthday, my step-brother and I aren't close since our parents got married when we were already adults (we met when I was 24 and he was 27), my niece and her sister are well behaved kids but I barely have the patience to be around my very loving, patient, and understanding husband right now because my knee is making me grumpy, and I get bingoed by my step-brother's wife every time I see her. Why does he think it's fine for me to aggravate my knee and put myself in danger for a kid's birthday dinner when the kid won't care if I'm there or not? via /r/childfree https://ift.tt/2SXQyz1