You should put that on a motivational poster 

Hospital room and character sprite:

I presume that you are limiting yourself to this size because you are afraid that bigger sprite won't look good when you draw it (you doubt in your skill).

You are correct 

I made a few modifications to your edit, and came up with this:

Pretty pleased with the result, I couldn't tell on yours wether the dot was a mouth or a nose, but I prefer the one without. Thanks BTW.
PS: The zoom function on pictures here makes them all blurry for me, do you know what might cause that issue? I'm on chrome on a mac...

Here's a very simple character sprite I made for a simple 2D interactive story(wouldn't call it a game, as the only challenge is not starving to death, no opponents etc, that might change later). Note on the shading: I am planing on doing a dynamic shading system, in the sense that the shading on the character will depend on where you are standing in the room, please keep this in mind when commenting about the sprite 
Here's a pic

Basic plot for those who wanna read it:
Your name is Roger Becker, you have been asleep in cryostasis for 150 years as part of an experiment, were you volunteered. The reason for this is you were going to be given 200 million dollars when you woke up. During your sleep however, a nuclear war broke out, and you wake up to a wasteland, the only sound the voice of the AI which woke you up.


Anyway, feedback on the sprite would be much appreciated.