[MacEachaidh]

Am I the only one who sees a problem with the opening clause of the OP's sentence?

The voice in her brain felt like it was dying makes "the voice in her brain" the subject of the verb — i.e. that the voice in her brain was doing the "feeling". Surely this is wrong? If *she* is the one doing the feeling, as she is also feeling the loss in strength from her leg wound, then it should be either

It felt like the voice in her brain was dying or She felt like the voice in her brain was dying.

And also ... I don't mean to nitpick, but the sentence seems to be based around two mismatched metaphors. The voice in her brain is draining in strength, but her leg is draining blood; the construction makes it sound like the blood from her wound is draining in strength, which makes no real sense to me.

What about:
It felt like the voice in her brain was dying, its strength draining as the dark blood drained from her freshly-opened leg wound ?

Originally Posted by rhadin

Actually, the problem is the mix of tenses. I think I would write the sentence like this:

This puts everything in the present tense. Presumably, the sentence is reporting something that is currently happening, not something that happened in the past; at least that is what draining, dying, and leaking imply.

No, the "felt" puts the sentence in the past, and "is dying" should be "was dying", or else you do have a mix of tenses. The question is not one of tense but of aspect — whether you choose to use the continuous aspect (an action that was continuing at the time the sentence refers to) or the perfect (completed) one. They don't technically need to agree, and in sentences like this a continuous aspect in the primary clause implies a continuous aspect in the other part of the sentence, even when that uses a perfect aspect. So you could say that the blood "leaked", rather than "was leaking", and it still implies a continuing action.