Hi ghostsblood, this is what I would do:

Mike leans down and strokes her sullen face. So bright and cheerful only ten minutes ago, now it is screwed up and red, swollen in fear and disgust. It is still full of life; fear and hatred – but it is still life.

Some other things in the text above:

*pant* is chatroom-speak. 'He was panting' works better in descriptive prose.

'Two hundred' and 'fifteen' look better than '200' and '15'.

This will probably make you groan 'Oh no, not that', but... Try as an experiment converting an entire paragraph of your story into past tense and test how it feels?