What does Monit do when it says 'initializing'?

If you look in /etc/monit/monitrc, you'll see one of the options is "set daemon" which controls how often Monit checks services. Mine is set at 120. So that is the quickest Monit will update what it reports. The script might return in 2 seconds, but if yours is set like mine Monit won't check it again for another 118 seconds thereafter.