Lawson was stripped of his license and imprisoned for falsifying medical records and fraud.

The assistant took a reduced sentence for his full cooperation.

And Christian Prescott was found guilty of conspiracy, fraud, coercion, falsifying records, and the web of financial crimes beneath it all, and sentenced to serve real years in a real prison.

When the verdict was read, I did not feel triumph.

I felt, for the first time in two years, that I could breathe — as though I had been underwater a long time and had finally reached the surface.

I have noticed that people expect a story like mine to end in a burst of vindication, a scene of the wronged woman watching her destroyer fall and feeling, at last, the hot satisfaction of revenge.